


Hiraeth

by bethepuck



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Kissing, M/M, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-08-31 15:50:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 54,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8584405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethepuck/pseuds/bethepuck
Summary: Hiraeth- (n) a homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was.McLennon Royalty/Arranged Marriage AU:The year is 1963 and Paul McCartney, the Duke of Cambridge and son of a wealthy, high-ranked noble, is to be married to the heir to the throne, John Lennon the Duke of Cornwall.





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!  
> I'm super excited to be writing this story (don't really know how it's going to go tbh and I've been messing around with different writing styles so...) because I've wanted to write an arranged marriage/royalty AU for a long while. First, the story takes place in 1963, but this is an AU, so gay marriage is not a conflict and is not considered unusual, even in a royal setting. Second, Paul and John are ROYALS (*royyalllsss*), which means Mimi is the Queen of England (LOL IK I DON'T KNOW I'M JUST TESTING THINGS OUT). Ringo and George are there too! This is just the start, we'll see how it goes...  
> Enjoy!

Paul grew up beneath the arched ceilings of a palace, traced gold embroidery lacing walls, cream skin of china dolls, crystalline chandeliers that called down to Paul, an echo away, so high above. Socks pulled up to his knees, a delicate little flower, he galloped down the trailing hallways in between lessons, leaping and soaring and bounding because the limit was that fantastic, handsome ceiling that appeared miles away for Paul. He could do anything. Seven years old and the whole concept of life was narrow and broad all at once. He was the son of a Duke and Duchess, grew up in carefree bliss, in perfectly squared innocence, in silk and satin and sunlight filtering through windowpanes. Paul knew the purple flowers in the royal garden were for him and the painting of the woman with the red flowy dress in the parlour was for him too, because they _had_ to be, that’s how it was meant to be. All for him.

The piano in the front hall was his too, heavy and thick, a paperweight to glaze his fingers across when the storm outside couldn’t outroar the storm inside. And the noise would blare for hours, even when the grand halls went silent and the room was ink and empty, the silence so bloated and charged with every emotion that Paul couldn’t voice. Fourteen years old and the black tailored suit in the crimson early November was his, standing in front of his mother’s grave in the royal plot, peering into the letters shocked into the granite as though they weren’t really supposed to be there. The emotions swarmed, rose and fell like the crescendo of his beating, broken heart, and for a while, he was consumed by the most ineffable sadness and he couldn’t remember the sound of his brother’s honey-colored laughter breathing a soul into the vacant air, sitting with deer legs dangling off high-backed violet chairs, peering over the wood of the dinner table at his mother’s graceful frame. Suddenly, _nothing_ was for him.

Paul loved his mother. She was the core of his life, the core of his home, and as she drifted out of his reach, the palace shifted like cooling embers and Paul groped in the dark for something to clasp hold of and anchor him in place, to find something that mattered, to find something real. But, as Paul grew up, the object of his search lay drowsy in the back of his mind and he began to forget the loneliness that once controlled much of his early teenage years.

 

***

 

Paul picked mindlessly at the strings, dragging dull fingernails across the wires, eliciting a low, throaty growl of a noise from the instrument that vibrated through his jaw, chin resting against the wood of the guitar. George mimicked the movement, an octave higher, dark brows knitted above gray eyes like two woolly caterpillars.

“Tha' sounds about right, eh?” Paul murmured between his lips, smile forming a crescent. It sounded dry and cracked like most of what they’d produced that white, flavorless morning in September, and Paul knew it, but he lived for those lazy afternoons when George came over to mess with lyrics and guitars and not much else.

George shrugged and plucked another cord, delving lower to eek out some kind of warm, glossy throng, like rolling thunder.

Paul kept the company of George often enough, fiddling around with different cords and lyrics in an effort to scratch something out comparable to the sounds of the greats, Elvis and Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, but never coming close in their pursuits. Most of the time on days like this, the two gave up and left their scraps of paper and stubs of pencils to stroll by the royal kitchen and snag a bun or two, maybe some tea if the feeling was right.

“Go lower with yours… No, an E…” George’s tongue snuck between his teeth as he stared intently at Paul’s fingers.

Paul had met George Harrison on the bus back from a record store one Sunday when he’d managed to escape over the iron gates, trickling through the cracks, feeling hot and anxious and giddy all the way into town. George had struck Paul as some kind of just-fallen-short-of-a-Teddy-Boy kid, slicked back hair still teased by the edge of youth, eyes dark and tired, too tired for someone so new to everything. He had the eyes of an old man, Paul had thought when he glanced at him from across the aisle.

“Oi, yer that posh kid that lives in the castle,” George said, tracking Paul’s gaze, fiddling with the zipper on his leather jacket, trailing it up and down on the tracks.

Teddy Boys don’t mess about with their leathers like that, Paul had thought.

“Yeah, what of it?” Paul had replied, slightly on edge. He’d nicked one of the records from the store, Buddy Holly, fingers deprived of the freedom they ached for within the china doll walls, and his skin felt glassy and sharp and prickly; he wasn’t too fond of a quick chat at the moment. Paul drew his jacket tighter over his ribs, the paper of the record cover molding to the thin, starched shirt underneath.

George smirked. His teeth were crooked, skin pale, like he was made of mist and Paul could reach his hand out and swipe him away.

“Didn’t know they let ye listen to tha' kind of stuff over there,” George nodded to the concealed record.

“They don’t,” Paul scowled and rolled his eyes. It was immature, but he felt bright and bold, free of the rules of his father and the English government, sitting on the public coach with this stocky boy and his kipped record. It felt all right.

George leaned in a bit, folding himself over, “If ye let me 'ave a listen, I won’t tell.”

And that’s where it began.

That was years ago. Paul was just a kid then, didn’t really know what he wanted or what he was doing, but neither did George for that matter.

Paul let his eyes trod off to the side of the sunroom on the East Wing of Kensington Palace where the sun poured in tucked behind the clouds, as if forgotten behind the books in a bookshelf. The vibrations of the music that Paul wasn’t, as a proper young man of the Royal English Court, supposed to listen to, let alone form on his lips, between his teeth like a forced, rushed secret, and with his hands, quick and unexpected, unplanned and unprecedented, fell flat in the little glass box that Paul and George sought refuge in whenever they felt loud and angry with what lot they had in a realm of silence and poise. Paul could let his voice shatter that little glass back with the excitement that he was never supposed to expose. It was simply unnerving, sitting still through important meetings of state matters, gazing blasé and glazed at the mahogany of the table, while the energy of the world coursed through his toes and in the back of his throat and threatened to tear him inside and out by his very fibres. Paul thought in lyrics. The rest of the council thought in another language altogether.

Those meetings of state often pulled Paul beneath the surface, reminding him that his life was, in fact, not his own, but belonged to the country. He was twenty-one years old at that time, and he had bigger dreams than taking a backseat in his own life, one that was being prodded at with rulers and sticks and poles to get it to cooperate with the political vision that was predestined for him. Their politics weren’t his and Paul had stopped cooperating long ago.

George had helped Paul see that there was more outside the iron gates and maze gardens of his childhood, that rock and roll made him feel the kind of things that he’d been keeping inside for so long, that made him feel some resemblance of home beneath the calm, flawless face of internalization.

Paul put his guitar down in resignation. The breeze vibrated outside the glass box.

“I think that’s about all you’ll get out of me today, son,” Paul stated.

George glanced up, undisturbed, fingers still dancing lazily, lawlessly, eyes gentle, untouched. He never really was affected much by anything. Paul liked him a lot for that. The world could tip over sideways and George would still thumb at his guitar in practiced falsetto ignorance.

 

***

 

It was a Monday morning, rain sloshing off the glamorous windows in the front hall, loftily, thick dismal clouds clotting the air, and Paul dotted his fingers across the table vaguely. The voices of England’s hierarchy droned on in his ears in a milky white noise as Paul stared with vacant eyes into the wall as if to engage in conversation. The same as every weekly meeting with his father’s council. Stale. Broad. Something always _almost_ luring his attention but never grasping it fully, a nebulous attempt.

A dense silence consumed his thoughts, as happened quite often these days, the dullness closing in like the eggshell walls of an insane asylum. Dismissively, he noted that he wanted to go into town later for a new pair of denims, maybe take the long way back because that attractive bird with the mousy brown hair lived on the extended, cutesy part of town with the slanty cream-colored houses facing with their backs to the wind. What was her name? Daisy? Dorothy? Dot. That was it. And he’d been meaning to get new strings for at least a month now, but he could postpone that for another week or so.

Deadpanning from its spot before Paul on the table sat an untouched piece of notepaper that always insisted on being set out before Paul’s place for each meeting. As satiated bored sunk deeply into the cool of his bones he drew unconscious scribbles of men in boots and long hair, scrawling lyrics that would never make it past his lips.

A word from the outside world pierced through Paul’s subconscious. He couldn’t fully grasp the meaning of it and didn’t hear the full letter combination, but it piqued his interest nonetheless.

He glanced up from his hands, anticipating. He felt the rain pulse under his skin and every particle in the room compressing against his muscles.

“Marriage…”

It clung to the base of his spine, fuzzy and dull like he’d just been clocked. He rolled his tongue across his teeth, looking for a fight, because these days he could never find an ally in the crowd.

“Oh, but that would be the best plan of action at this point, don’t you think?” Voices rained down like rose petals. But, none of them where directed towards him, only about him as he sat in plain view, blatantly overlooked and glaringly obvious.

Paul snapped his eyes about, cornered. How typical.

“What’re you on about?” Paul hummed like the dull glow of the moon. It wasn’t the best way to address any of the noblemen and statesmen before him, cracked and crude. His father certainly wouldn’t be happy about that if he’d heard it.

The dry faces of twenty men in suits glowered from behind their starchy papers, hiding in the most laughable way. Paul reached for a fag from a tattered thin box in his breast pocket, eyes set, pressing the tube between his teeth and lighting a match with the flick of his thumb as he’d seen a boy in a leather jacket tucked behind a dingy bar do once before.

“It has come to the attention of the council that Your Grace has no design for a future profession,” a balding man of about thirty stated after a brief recess in which Paul exhaled a veil of purpled smoke. He could hear his father’s words in his thoughts paralyzing his hands momentarily: “We do not _smoke_ in the meetinghouse, Paul, please put that disgusting tool down immediately before the kingdom collapses.”

Paul grinned a bit, “No?”

He focused on the little white cylinder, toying with it between the pads of his fingers pensively.

“If I may, Your Grace has expressed no appetite whatsoever in applying to the art of law or medicine, nor politics; it is highly, well, _unprecedented_.”

Paul stilled. True, Paul had no interest in becoming a lawyer, or a doctor, as James McCartney wished, but he was definitely going to end up doing _something_ , he just wasn’t sure what. At the moment, it leaned more towards starting a band, or possibly something with art, but he didn’t dare introduce those fields to the Royal Council.

“A suggestion of marriage has been made, if it might interest His Grace?” the unfortunate, balding soul proposed, hope glistening on his brow like a garnish.

Paul could’ve laughed. But instead, a graceless frown marred his pretty lips and he felt as though he might tear down monarchies with his rage.

His silence was mistaken as a unencumbered runway to continue on about an unfavorable marriage.

“Her Majesty, the _Queen_ , has personally made the proposition of her nephew, the Prince of Cornwall and heir to the English throne. A union with an English noble such as Your Grace would be most agreeable for both parties if—,” and that’s when Paul detonated.  
“Most _agreeable?_ For whom? For you lot? For my father’s pocketbook? This is all _news_ to me!” Paul’s voice caught against the empty walls, a clash of silver, a bite of steel, “What do they want _me_ for? A lapdog? A footrest?” Paul sneered, and although the lash of his words were so uncharacteristic, they flowed like gold for a brief, yet raw age of wisdom until silence.

“Paul,” Sir James McCartney, the Duke of York, a quiet, unmoving man with leaden eyes, stood at the door with the patience of a lifetime. He looked like a ghost. “The council’s decision is a valid one and should be considered. You’ve not observed any alternatives, so I’m resolved to have this option looked into.”

Paul tried not to gawk, but the task proved considerably difficult when the words coming out of his dad’s mouth were just plain fucking _stupid._ Galaxies exploded and dispersed behind Paul’s eyelids, but he poised himself still. The air hissed and whined with discomfort. For all his manners, Paul wished so dearly to stand up and cuss out his father until his lungs deflated. But, he was his mother’s son, so he remained seated and accepted, clipping his tongue betwixt his teeth and narrowing his eyes, speaking nil.

“It’s been scheduled that you are to have afternoon tea with Her Majesty and Her nephew tomorrow at three. I expect total compliance and good behavior for such an occasion,” the Duke presented the information orderly and diligently and Paul felt his throat close, heart stuttering in his ribs. So soon? So they’d discussed this matter before. Without Paul. And decided on this matter before. Also without Paul. The truth came and went and Paul felt nothing, numb with an ingenuous indifference. He felt sick, helpless, but it came across as nothing new, so it was easily ignored for the moment.

Arranged marriages among English royalty weren't unusual, albeit a tad old-fashioned, and was commonly used as a tool to strengthen bonds between wealthy families. But, another bloke? Paul knew that was a _thing,_ he’d read about the Dutch and the French doing that a few times for the same reasons; it was mainly for show, not mutual love or whatever, just a power security deal, but it was done nonetheless. The two parties would unite in an extravagant wedding but, soon after and more often than not, have backdoor consorts that the other husband knew of but never shared with the public. Paul could’ve coped if it were a bird, a pretty little blonde thing who didn’t talk too much, pouty lips, big eyes, but he had no intention to marry another _guy._ He wasn’t a poof for chrissake, he’d never leaned that way before a day in his life. But, it didn’t matter, did it? As long as everybody else was happy, as long as the match was good and the benefits of the union were better than Paul sacrificing his situation in life was all swell in England town.

The council stood all at once like a cult. Paul snuffed out his barely burnt cig to the soundtrack of unnecessary paper shuffling and indifferent and superfluous conversations purring in the backdrop, gray eyes trained on the gray ashes in the tray.

So that was all then. Lapdog and footrest it’ll be.


	2. A Lovely Afternoon for Tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who is reading this! H a h a please enjoy this chapter. Technically, we do "meet" John at the end of this chapter, but not really sorry... :(

Paul sloped his gaze about the room absently. Buckingham Palace, how charming. They’d placed Paul in a rather gaudy white drawing room upon arrival, exiled to an island of stiff furniture and portraits of men with shapely legs dipped in stockings. A plain tea set rested on the table, but no host or hostess appeared. Time felt banished from this emptily full room and nothing appeared real except Paul’s fingers twisted anxiously in the fabric of his pockets because if Paul ever were an anxious boy, nobody was allowed to see it.

Maybe this whole thing was a set up to see how far they could get Paul to walk before he tripped off the edge, a cruel joke. The thought indulged Paul’s broken ego, already contorted by the action that he had to come here at all, trussed up in a colorless new suit just like all the others and a silken tie, propped up and neat on a delicate gold-embroidered cream-colored couch like a sponge cake to be tasted or tossed. Paul’s legs squirmed, begging to take their leave in order to preserve some overall dignity, but his mind obediently remained. Do as you’re told, as you’re supposed to, as you need to, but never as you want to.

The click of feminine strides against carpeting reared Paul to stand, swaying on graceless but remaining composed momentarily all the same, minting a smile to his lips like he actually gave a fuck. He nodded his head in a cordial bow, but thought of the nastiest, most offensive cuss words in his mind to blot out all the goodness of the noble motion with vulgarity. He looked at his polished shoes. The right one was untied. _Oh no, maybe they won’t take me now_ , he thought dully.

A proper man in a meticulous suit trotted calmly behind, a thoroughbred show horse, “Her Majesty the Queen.” His hair was combed to the side in little rivulets; there was something nice and refined about his mouth when he spoke. Paul wanted to trust him. His eyes smiled, but the man himself did not, standing erect and at full attentiveness.

“No need for formalities, Brian, he knows who I am,” the petite woman presented a cold, thin-lipped smile and observed Paul as though she could see through him like caramel. She was a pitbull, an enforcer, a no-nonsense in my castle, young man, kind of lady; Paul could feel it in her aura all the way down to her fingertips when her voice rung out through the room, warning everybody present to walk on eggshells because _she_ would be watching every twitch, every intake of breath, every uncomfortable shift of foot. It frightened Paul. She reminded him of her father.

A dangerous lukewarm volt coursed under Paul’s skin as it became clear with time that “the nephew” was not present. The woman, the _Queen,_ dressed in plum, spoke in a manner of continual displeasure as she observed Paul discretely, though she did not sit down. Her bony, snowflake hands were folded primly out in front of her, clasped and firm. She looked almost artificial, a styrofoam cutout, painted and placed before him.

“It seems my nephew has decided not to join us this afternoon,” the Queen stated, abhorrent glare flicking down to Paul’s tie. He forced himself not to look down to check for snags or spots, balling his fist up behind his back, printing the smile against his cheeks more prominently despite the bad news she presented.

“An assistant will be with you shortly to reschedule,” she spoke loftily.

“One minute, Your Majesty,” the proper man at the door said, nodding.

“So good to meet you…” her eyes gaped like two rippling black holes, mouth taut and omni-stoic.

“Paul,” the proper man filled in knowingly.

Paul felt almost sick. His smile faltered. How many others have been in his exact position right now? A consort for the prince? An audition for England’s most eligible husband? It was pathetic.

The Queen gestured through the air, “Yes, Paul. We’ll be seeing you again soon, hopefully,” and with that, she exited as swiftly as she manifested herself, the door shutting behind her.

The palace fell still and Paul lowered cautiously back down onto the sofa, numb. The hyperawareness of a starched dress shirt against his skin and the pad of footsteps escaping further and further from his solitude evaded his thoughts. It was a feeling of being lost, of being out of control that controlled him and trapped him in his space.

He thought of the nephew (what was his name again? Stupid git? Selfish bastard?) that stood him up for bloody sit-down Tuesday afternoon tea. Paul felt like a ripe idiot, fingers running across the seams of the designed sofa, feeling lingering a little too long on a loose fuchsia thread, spinning it betwixt two fingers before remembering his place. Paul could’ve easily done the same, could’ve run for it after the royal procession picked him up this morning, but Paul wasn’t a coward. He was scared, completely and authentically so, but he’d managed to put his trousers on and do what he was supposed to.

A decorated, gilded piano off to the left with exuberant cherubs and florid designs and embellished legs, glinted in the sunlight of Paul’s weary attention span. Absorbed in his own existence, he was not aware how close he came, leaning over the instrument, before his fingers brushed the ivory and a voice shattered his headspace.

“Do you always touch things that aren’t yours?” Paul stood up, frightened, snapping his head against the open lid of the weighty item, before thunking back down on the piano bench, and glancing over to the door where a young man stood, smiling gently.

His blue eyes drooped and sidled off, giving a force of welcomeness and understanding that Paul wanted to exploit and drink in like alcohol. He was dressed as sharply as the last man, but he wore his suit like an accolade, not a birthright.

“And you are?” Paul blinked, recalling his current position and previous encounter, ignoring the confrontation.

“Richard Starkey, personal assistant of Prince John. You can call me Ringo,” he grinned, face alight with genuine emotion. In his hands he held a light stack of paper, which he dropped down onto the table, before sitting on the white sofa.

“Tea?” He offered Paul, pouring himself a cup.

Paul eyed him disconcertedly, guarded, drawing out the “No…” and pausing before adding, “Thanks…”

Ringo crossed his legs casually on the edge of the table and Paul refrained from sarcastically gasping at the audacious movement. He took a tipsy sip of the lip of the cup, placing it back down on the ring of the saucer, humming a thoughtful decibel of concern. “D’you play?”

“What?” Paul glanced back over to the other young man, confused that the conversation had continued.

Ringo nodded to the piano patiently.

“Uh, yeah, a bit. Why?” Paul felt the familiar liquid glow of embarrassment hot in his throat. He ducked his head and wished to evaporate, sink in through the floorboards, possibly through the seals of the window, and absorb into the atmosphere like dust.

“You can play some if you’d like,” Ringo picked up one of the papers, examining it casually.

Paul sat there dumbly in his own uncomfortable silence that Ringo appeared quite oblivious to or very aware of. A beat or two passed, but the offer wasn’t retracted, so Paul began chasing out the notes of a song as slow and unsure as Paul felt. He used to play it for his dad when company came over to impress them all, left them reeling at how _promising_ the young McCartney boy was, _a real talent_.

“Got anythin' faster?” Ringo interrupted Paul’s detached nostalgia, face excited by his own gentle teasing.

The air decompressed and Paul wrinkled his nose, leering loosely, teeth flashing despite himself, keys twisting and crossing into some Elvis-sounding, chest pounding, soul reviving chorus. The room exploded in fervor and light and across the room, the ripping tap tap tap of a drumbeat cradled along with the melody. Paul threw a glance to Ringo, beating two of the stirring spoons against the antique table, mouth split open wide with a gleeful grin, his spirit pouring out of those bright blue eyes. It was all right, sitting there, pounding a heartbeat into those piano keys.

Embracing the novelty of show, words flowed unconsciously from Paul, silly little lyrics that may or may not have been directly off the crumpled snippets of paper lying on the floor of the sunroom beneath George’s sock-clad feet a few days prior. The riff died out in dopey laughter and Ringo stood, clapping proudly as Paul bowed ostentatiously, tripping over his own feet on his journey over to an embroidered, high-backed armchair.

“You can drum?” Paul was _glowing,_ breathless.

“Only when there’s an emergency,” Ringo shrugged in mock arrogance.

Paul liked Ringo. He made the afternoon not feel like a complete waste, passing quickly and easily like something out of a movie. They talked about music and girls, about the Master of the House, Brian Epstein, and about the Queen (“oh, for fuck’s sake, Paul, just call her Mimi, everybody does it”), about the Palace and the weird idea of marriage that Paul so desperately wished to avoid.

“I’m not, y’know, _queer_ , er anythin'…” Paul said coldly, averting his eyes to the carpet because it couldn’t look back at him in judgment, not that Ringo would. The whole topic beat discomfort against the back of his neck like a drowsy sun, violent, yet detained, and Paul wished to ignore the skirmish forever. A sardonic flush clung to his cheeks and at the tips of his ears to force him to reevaluate his own current situation and sexuality in a way he’d never have thought he’d had to do.

“No, no, it’s just a legal union, nobody’s sayin' you have to _do_ anythin'. Besides, John certainly isn’t either. He’s had loads of girls in and out of this place; practically compromised the whole security system with his _exploits,”_ Ringo laughed and Paul’s stomach tightened for a reason he didn’t care to explore. _So, that’s settled. We’re both just as disinterested in this as the other. Good. It’s better that way._ Something that fluttered similarly to hope sunk far down in Paul’s throat. Only a legal union means they’d live in the same place, share the same meals, but beds were off limits. Or were they? What’s there to _do_ anyway? Maybe they could play a game or a few of cards every Friday night in lieu of sexual activity. Paul remembered consorts and side door girls, easy lays, and the infidelity and secrecy snagged at some long-passed-over integrity he hadn’t checked in on since he’d had his first girlfriend. But those laws of relationships returned as Paul sat contemplatively in this pompously bleached drawing room, fear a constant companion at his breast through and through.

Paul swallowed and carded a hand through his freshly trimmed coif. His curiosity outweighed most else. Ringo was examining a slip of paper that looked like notes. His handwriting was slanty and smushed to fit on one scrap of paper. Paul bit his lip, shifting his gaze, “So, what’s he like?”

The room wavered in heat lazily, motionless as a sweltering June day.

Ringo seemed unperturbed, wiping a hand on his pantleg, bun crumbs littering the pitch material laxly.

“John? I think he’s misunderstood.” Ringo swirled a spoonful of sugar into his dwindling cup as if that answered everything, still chewing around his words. Paul eyed him. Inattentively, he registered that his hands were shaking. “The John everybody meets isn’t the John you get. He’s much more complex than the surface shows, if that makes any sense.”

 _No, it doesn’t._ “Yeah,” Paul resigned, let down in his own way. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but that wasn’t it.

“Wanna see him?” Ringo daggered, catching Paul off guard.

“What? D'you have him stuffed and mounted somewhere?” Paul simpered and Ringo laughed low in his throat.

“He’s royalty, you git. They’re big into portraiture,” Ringo stood, motioning for Paul to follow out into the large expanse of a hallway.

Carding through the mazes of Buckingham Palace’s corridors, Ringo lead Paul to the largest picture gallery he’d ever seen. From eye-level to the ceiling, hundreds of royal portraits adorned the walls, looming on the far right with the oldest ones and racing off to the left with the most recent. Ringo pointed way down to the earlier paintings, describing distant relatives, Charles and Elizabeth and Alfred and Henry and a plethora of Edwards. But, Paul wasn’t really listening, attention crossing a bridge to observe a score of paintings nearest to where they presently stood, tracing the years from infancy to early adulthood. They were clearly all of the same boy, the twin expression of mild amusement, mild disgust toying at his thin mouth, same dark, dark eyes and sharp gaze malice in cheer. In the most recent portraits, his jawline had filled out, cool composure characterizing the planes of his face, and as Paul drew nearer, he felt as though he were the only person standing in the hallway before the grand painting, the rest lost in a hue of mingled sounds and colors, a contingency of watercolors.

Beneath the young man’s blank portrait stare, Paul could envision a smirk at those lips, an excitement in his eyes, but the painting did not contort and move as a live human being would and Paul recalled that he was left alone in the drawing room today.

Ringo had said that John could be very charming when he wanted to be, very witty and quick, and beneath the layers of expensive paint, Paul could almost _feel_ it.

“We sometimes like to call this 'The Hall of John',” Ringo courted into Paul’s thoughts, switching off the radio broadcast abruptly ending in static. He gestured to the cluster of paintings, “Mimi’s ordered a portrait to be done every year since he came to live here, like she was worried she’d forget what he looks like or somethin' silly like tha',” Ringo pointed to the wall again.

“Yeah,” Paul said to fill the blank space in his head, because ever since he had arrived at Buckingham Palace, his head was spinning, diving, trilling with noise and motion and thoughts, but suddenly, everything just shut off and calmed, the deep, unknown end of the pond.


	3. Take Me to the Bars, Georgie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay for quick n' short updates and alright, yeah, no Johnny Boy yet (it's too early for him! Not enough background, if you'd ask me), BUT HE'S A-COMIN' YESSIR HE'LL BE RIGHT UP NEXT CHAPTER (which is sure to be a long one))). Thank you ThAnK yOu THANK YOU for all your lovely comments and feedback it's so nice and reassuring that I'm not just jumping off a cliff with this one. Also, this is looking like it's gonna be an "enemy to lovers" fic bc I'm such a slut for sex. tensh. (sexual tension). Please Enjoy this chapter about worrisome Paul and unhelpful joj!

“So did ya fall madly in love? Swept ya off yer feet, did he?” George bumped his shoulders against Paul’s, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his leather jacket, tame, yet obnoxious sneer cracked on his face. The night was sick and hollow, smudged with the bleary light of drowsy orange streetlamps, a distant wind racking the streets with trapped intent as the two figures of Paul and George traced along the sidewalk to a newly discovered bar that George had heard of from a friend. Paul popped his collar and elbowed his scrawny friend in the fleshy part of his stomach, just below the ribs.

“Get yer filthy mind out of yer arse, I didn’t even meet the bastard,” Paul shuffled along, blatantly ignoring the smug stratosphere of his friend bleeding into his very breathing air.

Paul had planned on not telling George that his father was set on playing matchmaker to solidify Paul’s future. His younger brother Mike had other ideas. The moment George entered through the front hall the morning after Paul’s visit to Buckingham Palace, Mike had slipped the news across the table like a bribe, excitement shaking his tone, and George had almost overlooked it altogether if Paul had not burst through the side door, fuming and wildly embarrassed, inadvertently confirming Mike’s unusual statement in an instant.

“What? Didn’t even meet him? Well, why the hell _not,_ Paulie, old chap, you had a spot of tea with the lad, no?” George slung his arm around Paul’s shoulders, walking in step with the other, tone floppy and jittery with childish humor.

Paul hissed, shrugging George’s grip off him as he entered the dingy, hole-in-the-wall club first, ducking his head, eyes adjusting to the foggy heat, low ceiling, and clot of voices. What a dump. But, that was how it was supposed to be if they ever wanted privacy. Pick an out of the way club with sticky floors and run down bartenders with rundown locals sitting on rundown stools, drinking watered-down beers.

“Oh, just drop it,” Paul growled, not really angry, just exhausted over the subject he’d been prodded about for the past three days.

This place was slightly less broken than the rest, a kitschy band on a faltering, sagging stage, grinding out a diluted tune that Paul could vaguely place as Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” But, Paul didn’t believe it when they played; it sounded all wrong, forced and fake and stiff, a sour taste.

Paul made a face and slipped past a snogging couple in the middle of the aisle to step up to the bar. George connected at his side, slipping onto a stool nonchalantly, still flashing a dopey grin, resting his chin on his fist.

“ _Come off it_. I’m not spendin' a whole night with you lookin' at me like tha',” Paul sneered. He tapped along to the glitchy beat against the wood of the bar top, shifting his view about the place. It was mostly young people their age, maybe a bit older, most of them completely obliterated or headed that way, hanging on each other, doing God knows what to each other, all out of desperation and need. Only the best from George.

“So, when’s the next date, huh?” George pestered lightly.

Paul glowered and lit a fag.

“It’s not a _date_. We’re— _I’m—_ no poof. Got it?” Paul dropped his voice, was losing his edge. George knew Paul wasn’t one, had seen enough proof to last a lifetime to catch on to that, but it was an amusing situation nonetheless.

Paul hadn’t even wanted to leave the palace tonight, really, but George seemed so excited and _“C’mon Paul, we haven’t been to this place yet, it’s been a week since we’ve been out,”_ so Paul, out of the grandeur of his magnanimous heart, obliged. Regret sunk its talons into his skin.

“It’s alrigh', you can trust me,” George beamed, eyes like polished opal, canines showing and glowing.

When the condensation-stuck glass slid into Paul’s warm, sweaty palm, he knocked it back before he could get in another breath. Sobriety was for the strong of character and Paul felt no inclination towards that slice of the spectrum that night. He felt like getting dizzy dumb, finding some bird, and spinning out of control before the early morning light christened the windows.

The wet of the glass crisped against the divots in Paul’s palms, calloused and wrecked from hours of plucking at a guitar, searching for a sound that could take him away somewhere where the sky wasn’t perpetually gray and tomorrow was slightly more promising. He thought of John, of the next scheduled meeting, a _dinner_ for chrissake, and frowned towards the rim of his glass, stifling a pinched face. George would surely notice Paul’s displeasure almost immediately but not voice it, just glower pensively, withdrawn, pulled out of touch, worried it was he who caused it, but internally recognizing that he was _never_ the cause of it.

The music echoed out the walls of the bar, dancing off the melancholy sagging boards of the ceiling, like playing in the vacant belly of a whale to a clout of water-drunk drowning fish too sick of swimming to care about getting eaten. It was a sad place to be. It made Paul sad.

Paul shifted on his stool and George chipped away at the quiet that had settled in their little corner of the den.

“'ave you thought about this? Y’know…. Marriage?” The word sounded weird when George said it, like he was too young to be saying it, like he wasn’t _ready_ to say it.

“Didn’t know I was allowed to think about it, thought it’d be better not to,” was Paul’s bare reply; his throat was stuck and dry. Suddenly, he felt as though he didn’t need to offer the world a better explanation than this.

George smirked, serious eyes sparkling in the dim light, “Aye, but it might help a bit.”

“Like you’d know anythin' about thinkin'. You just write songs in your head all day, doesn’t take an ounce of brainpower,” Paul jeered. George lulled his gaze over in appreciation, peaceful understanding.

The night passed as a dream, foggy and quick. When Paul paused to relish in the moment, in the alcohol, in his friend’s voice inside his ears, it felt an eternity as the seconds slid by thickly.

Five and a half drinks in, Paul traced the outlines of his fingers, George’s poking by his side.

“But, how’ll it _work_?” George slurred. He got dopey and confused in a reserved, timid kind of way, when enough alcohol dominated the highway of his bloodstream.

“Where’s yer mind, me lad? I haven’t an idea what yer on about,” Paul hiccupped.

“The marriage. _Paul_ , you can’t have kiddies. How will the bloody empire _survive_?” George leaned forward against the wood of the bar, thin arms supporting thin frame. His eyes were lax and heavy as he rolled on.

“Don’t you think I know tha'?” Paul lightened off, no longer sore about the subject of a union in his twisted off state. He could see stars in the ceiling, gods and goddess in the empty glasses lining the bar top. His stomach fluttered in counterfeit anticipation.

“So adoption then?” George offered.

“Oh, they’d never,” Paul giggled, bridging on hilarity, “Adoption by the royal family? There’d be riots.”

George was still for a beat.

“You’ve not even met 'im? What if you don’ _like_ 'im?”

A concentrated, filmy haze cradled the room now, heat and sweat and too tired to care.

Paul held himself gently in a disquieted reverence, gazing blankly at a nail on the wall. He had sincerely been hoping for the past couple of days that he _would_ like John, that he’d somehow end up bumping into him in a record store or on the bus and hit it off instantly, like they’d been soul mates in a past life and reunited in this one, that Paul could find a home in John, or at least be friends, and his drunken, saturated mind indulged in this picture of John, as Paul’s savior. But, as desperation cleared with the fog and sobriety hauled Paul to the surface of sanity, it became achingly apparent that John would not fill this role as the grainy, meticulous portion of Paul’s subconscious seemed to think. His impending arrangement made his vision shake, cropped and cluttered. The hyperawareness of his socks bunched up in his shoes and the sweat cooling underneath his collar centered him in the moment, in the idea that this marriage might not actually take off after all, that it was very early to confirm any sort of engagement whatsoever.

“And wha' if he’s… not into birds as much as you are…” George tapered off lightly. Paul could tell he was uncomfortable wording it. His thoughts stung the air and painted it magenta.

Paul hesitated because he really didn’t know. None of this felt real at all, hadn’t in a while either.

“Let’s go, Geo,” Paul said quietly, but not upset; no, now was not the time for that. He was too dizzy and too gone to be down, too tanked inside and out to think about the possibility that John would lean that way and Paul’d be confined.

George complied, as he always did, despite the mismatched words that still wilted on his tongue, and the two paid for their drinks, teetering out onto the sidewalk and into the pale, bruised purple morning air.


	4. A Prince Named John

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo new chapter! Here's Johnnyyyy! (Also, by this time, historically, Stu would have already been dead, but since this is basically just a ridiculous, fantastical AU, our good buddypal Stu-Stu is still alive and well)... Like I said in the notes of last chapter, this is going to be a hate to love fic (yay!)/slow burn, so it'll be a lil rough build-up for a bit (I mean they're strangers right now so I don't think it'd make much logical sense)

A pulse pounded at the fleshy spot behind his ears, pounded in his head, until he was convinced it wasn’t _his_ pulse pounding at all, but someone else’s. Paul, satin in the sheets, fought against the targeting morning throes that tore forth through spread windows, that called to him for a new day, for a new beginning, and Paul called back with a ‘shut the hell up, can’t you see I’m fucking _hungover_ ’ (metaphorically, of course), before hurling down the side of his bed, eyes squeezed shut, vision in white and orange. Fingers hooked in miles of cobalt comforter, eyes concealed beneath steel heavy vaults, he sighed against the mattress, melted and meshed. Today, he was supposed to meet John, turbulent inner-turmoil. It was a witticism really, the whole thing, and Paul felt baptized in determination to believe that this whole thing wasn’t worth his gold and silver time.

His limbs felt overused and underused, joints soft and sore as he swung off the side of the bed with swapped legs and rung for the maid. It was mid-afternoon, if the roaring flame in the sky was any indication, leaving little time to ring George or practice some cords before the dressers came in to pull Paul together and make a proper right gentleman of him for the snuffs to shed cold, tight-lipped smiles upon in fair-weather approval.

After a shower, a late lunch taken standing up and squinting at the sun wondering why today of all days it chose to appear after weeks of gray melancholy, and an early read of points that would be discussed in his “appointment with His Highness the Duke of Cornwall, Prince John, Heir to the English Crown” (which was quite a mouthful and totally unnecessary for casual conversation, thought Paul), Paul stood before a flock of four dressing maids, clad in his underclothes, blandly pausing his view to his own reflection in the mirror. Was this what John would see? Almond hazel eyes, parted lips, curving eyebrows, button nose (as Mike liked to describe it), hair dark and hanging over his forehead if he’d have his way and leave it unparted. He looked worn down, the nub of an eraser, light and color dull in his expressions, like he couldn’t scrub enough life in them to make him look more existent than he felt. One of the mollies in uniform plucked at Paul’s undershirt, suggesting he switch to one of the other exact same white cottons for some highly insignificant reason. They huddled and whispered together that Paul would do just that. In removing the article, a wave of estranged vertigo erupted throughout his body, shaking the world, a wavy, windy mess. The sickness of his early morning escapades haunted him, two crescent moons of blurry sleeplessness imprinting beneath his eyes.

“This one, Your Grace,” one of the ladies spoke in a soft gentle voice, as they all did, approaching a wild lion in the safari with that voice, afraid and timid to change a temperament with that voice, and waved a white, collared button-down at him. Paul offhandedly accepted the item physically, but not mentally or emotionally. The maid's name was Pattie. She had these pretty strawberry lips and whimsical, thoughtful blue eyes. George had made some airy shy remark about her, and Paul couldn’t stop putting the two together in his own mind like some kind of ditzy, romanticized fool. Paul put the shirt on.

Pants were a project in itself and Paul thought the National Guard was going to be needed because the four girls in their knee socks and blazers couldn’t decipher whether or not the black pants for formality or navy pants for openness would do better. Already running thirty minutes late, Paul stood at the door, tailored and tired, a person outside of a person, waiting to be told what to do, resigned. The four ladies twittered about in an excited sort of way that seemed fake to Paul.

“But, His Grace can’t wear the circular cufflinks, oh that just won’t do!”

“But they were a gift from the Queen of Denmark, it will show just how _worldly_ His Grace is!”

“I think the Prince will like the triangular cufflinks the most, yes, I’m sure of it.”

“The _triangular_ ones? Are you mad, Maureen? That’s ridiculous! The Prince wouldn’t like those at all!”

Paul interjected impatiently, “I won’t wear any at all, he’s not going to see them and he doesn’t care about what _cufflinks_ I’m wearin' for _God’s_ sake.”

The four delicate creatures were taken for horror and turned to observe the Duke with their piercing, awe-centered, self-centered eyes that projected that Paul didn’t understand the stress they were under and what their jobs entailed, so he had no right to contradict them on any matters of fashion.

His cuffs went adorned with the triangular-shaped links as it was all-around agreed that John would be most pleased by that particular model. As soon as Paul entered into the car, he removed the cufflinks and hid them in his pocket. To hell with cufflinks and to hell with following other people’s made up rules.

The ride to Buckingham Palace was spent in a dreary, preoccupied living, despite the grin and glow of the sun overhead, seemingly following the car. Smudges of soft, palpable clouds streaked across the sky, aesthetically dreamy, but out of the way of the dandelion of luminescence.

He had no expectations about John, knew nothing of his countenance. What little information the council had given was along the lines of his age (a year and a half older than Paul) and his years at art college in Liverpool, all patchy and broken as if John had been purposely kept outside of the eyes of the public for some unknown reason. Paul had a premonition that the council knew exactly why and had withheld it out of fear that Paul might as well have rebelled and demanded a refusal of the marriage along those lines. When Paul requested knowledge of the young man’s personality, sense of humor, and manners, the room concealed a nervous silence. He had managed to get the impression from Ringo that John was not “the stereotypical gentleman” and that he “lacked the refinement that most princes possess.” Also from Ringo were the rumors about his multitude of success with women, quick and cutting wit and humor, and shadowed intelligent undertones, all less desirable, but amiable traits.

Stepping into the crispness of the gilt September day, a breeze from across the Scottish hills picked up and wandered, foreshadowing a later storm, that the sun would shine for now, for Paul, but later it would storm, it would rain, it would roar, for later, for John. A grand procession of guards, black feathered fur caps resting in hilarity atop their heads and strung in gold against their chins, saluting the royalty with their rifles dutifully. The nerves sauntered back to Paul, led behind the grand limestone mansion by an escort and one of the armed guardians to the royal gardens where the prince apparently was “relaxing before dinner.” The Queen was not with them and Paul was rather shocked at his own relief that danced in his disposition. Greenery painted the side of the palace, the grass fervent and lush as the amazing slate of the royal grounds spread out before Paul, the sheer splendor of the land a sight to spend hours gazing upon. Not a soul made itself known to them, the entire place a forgotten and empty shell.

Autumn had breathed grace on some of the trees that dotted the landscape, tainting the green with red and orange, yellow and brown, a collage of mistakes and miracles, thought Paul. As they neared a hidden path that trailed into seclusion from the vulnerability of the emerald coast, the faint drift of music siphoned in with the breeze.

Ringo had disclosed, rather hesitantly and with a practiced casualty and disinterest, as if it were specifically on his note paper that he omit that part about John’s attributes to Paul, that John enjoyed music very much (“a little too much for Mimi’s liking, I’d say,” Ringo spun negativity into his words, but it was affable, non-believable, almost scripted and he himself could taste the stretch in his voice).

The thicket of trees parted and the path narrowed; an individual sector of the royal gardens attributed for one person gave forth and Paul slowed to stand at the entrance of it, staring at the figure of a young man with his back to Paul, dressed in a black suit, focused out into the wood, stationary. The man’s hair was a darker, toffee auburn color, slightly mussed by the wind, and a bit longer than Paul’s own. His calm serenity reassured Paul, a turgid branch, stolid amidst a storm.

“His Grace, the Duke of Cambridge,” the escort lashed the glass peace with his announcement. At the sudden strike of the voice, the man turned to face Paul, the portrait from the hall alive and in motion. Squinting his eyes in their direction, his mouth quirked into that of a sneer.

Paul made no motion to move forward to greet him, despite the voice of the escort from behind, _“please, Your Grace, His Majesty has been expecting you.”_

Paul remained planted, observing. He was regularly built, and had a rather masculine tint to his shoulders and arms. The young man’s face was animated, a handsome glow suggesting vivacity and spirit that raced like the wind and howled like the rush of waves against a cliff. The man was mesmerizing from the way he stood, a hilt of determination, a buff of contest at his hip, an intimidating twist on a regular stance, but it fit and Paul was more impressed than afraid. His mien was a trained majesty, a man born for greatness, settled ferocity and determination that he would get what he desired with whatever means necessary. He held himself like he knew he was good, and he was waiting for everyone else to come to that conclusion too. In his palm, he concealed an object before tucking it in his pocket altogether, like he didn’t want Paul to see it, didn’t want Paul to know anything about him.

“Here already?” A shrewd voice tight to the right demanded, and Paul hadn’t even spotted the other young man having tea at a small table with two wiry, iron chairs placed awkwardly at its side. The uncomfortable deduction that the two young men had been discussing him before his current arrival was inexplicably traced in Paul’s brain, projecting itself loudly in the discomfort and open.

Paul’s eyes were focused completely on the complexity of John, who had reluctantly pulled out a pair of dark-rimmed black glasses and put them on, now staring at Paul fully; Ringo had mentioned John was as blind as a rock, couldn’t see much but splotches of condensed colors without his glasses, yet refused to wear them anyway. His face was carved of weathered stone, a flicker of interest grazing his gaze, a mode of delight razor thin, which Paul took to be captivation almost. Amusement toyed at his features and tingled in the staticky air around him, charging their eye contact, palpable and luring.

“Aye, this one’s rather pretty isn’t he?” John’s voice shot through the air, low and smooth, sarcasm laced dangerously in his tone. His rhetoric was something harsh and crude, but Paul felt like it clicked something at the edge of his very roots and called him closer and closer still. He frowned at the assault on his appearances and shifted his weight, to heal his own attention.

“All dolled up, like a tart,” the other said, sipping loudly at his cup.

A hot flush crept up Paul’s cheeks, lingering high and leaden. His pride felt every edge of the knife that rubbed through it; he hated this other man immediately, this stupid boy with his handsome, pure face and dark hair, wished he’d just shut his dirty face orifice and leave him be.

“Master Sutcliffe, would you so _kindly_ depart from the scene, a royal appointment has been made at this locale,” the escort spoke in sugar.

“Yeah, about an hour ago,” John spoke in acid. Paul ducked his head, stonily embarrassed, cursing the cufflinks in his pocket for making him so drastically late.

The garden rested at a dramatic western-y standoff, the cold of the impending fall making itself distantly known, before John huffed a dusted, “Ta then, Stu,” resulting in the departure of all but Paul and John, including that of John’s glasses back into his pocket, as if they’d never been taken out at all.

Teeth at the flesh of his lips, body electric and humming, Paul took his tentative steps further into the garden, and John was black cherry wine, the ruddy taste lingering on tongue, burning trail, a drowsy hazed memory, as the older boy eyed Paul’s nervous movement, expression darkening more, dropping down unimpressed into the chair that the other man had previously occupied and recently vacated. Paul chewed his nails in anxiety, determination weighing heavy in his throat. An uncomfortable mutual acknowledgement of their positions made conversation an obvious barrier, as it would inadvertently always lead back to that poisonous, terminal word. _Marriage._

As Paul opened his mouth to speak, John drew the object from his pocket, a shiny, German-model mouth organ, and began to play, light and jovial, a gross contrast to the atmospheric sandstorm that loomed between them, eyes trained on Paul, lips moving across the face of the instrument respectfully. There was a challenge in John’s facade, a mock in every note he hit, even further beneath it, anger and resentment, and some message in Paul’s conscience made the connection that John had already decided Paul was on his blot list. The candid sky rolled a turbid sheet of silver.

“I play the guitar,” Paul offered loosely, voice dripping in chocolate sweet, seduction and innocence a sinful concoction. But, his patience threaded unconsciously small, he didn’t entertain the idea of being ignored and disrespected, cinnamon threat weaving into his eyes to challenge resistance and be met with freefalling force learned from childhood.

John put the metal rectangle down and sat back in his chair, folding one leg over the other, hands neatly in his lap, posture absurdly upright, voice shooting up several octaves, “Oh good! Then one of us can work the clubs whilst the other tends to the wee littl'uns at home!” He shed a simulated smile across his cheeks, eyes alight with insincere excitement, eyebrows comically raised. One of his front teeth was chipped slightly. John was the anticipation on a cold black, snowless December night.

Paul grit down, delicacy departed from his form as he stalked over and took the chair across from John, crossing his arms.

“I get it—,” Paul started, steam beneath his contained words, before John interjected, voice level and raw, “Do ya, son? ‘Cause I think you’ve got yer goddamn head in the clouds, comin' over here for a nice candle n' rose petal date. Did ya think you’d fit in a snog sometime between appetizers n' dessert?”

Paul’s chest tightened, mortified, but he set his jaw and kept it inside, refusing any gratification at John’s end. John had thought _Paul_ was the bleeding fairy?

Silence was a poor choice of action; an obnoxious smugness accented the older man’s expression, a red sea, thin lips trickling up at the corners in a self-satisfactory brand. John knew he had won. He knew from the shrouded hurt in Paul’s eyes and the pout at his full lips that he had struck a chord that Paul had been avoiding ever since the marriage had been introduced.

“Christ, where’d she _find_ you? At the bad end of town lookin' for a client on a street corner?” John laughed. It sounded ugly. Paul despised him, despised his stupid palace and ridiculous marriage (because that’s what Paul thought of it as, “John’s Marriage”) and especially _him,_ in all his sarcastic and arrogant and mean majesty.

“I’m no queer,” Paul ground out, coal black and betrayal, a poor case for a smitten defense.

“With a face like tha', no one would believe you,” John smirked.

“It was _your_ fuckin’ aunt who suggested a marriage,” Paul reminded gathering thunder, “Maybe she felt bad her little queer nephew couldn’t find anyone to suck his—,” and that’s when John lunged forward across the wiry little table, knocking over the antique tea set and cracking clenched knuckles to the gentle of Paul’s face.

Paul dug dull fingernails into the fabric of John’s suit jacket as they struck earth, grabbing one of his wrists to stop the onslaught, but not fighting back. John leaned over the younger man after just one hit, albeit a good one, got him square in the nose, dominant fist raised and poised, momentum frightening as he sat back a moment with all his weight, surprisingly more than Paul had anticipated, breath catching after calming down from his fleeting lash of explosive rage, legs on either side of Paul’s, eyes that of a wild stallion. Behind him and above him, the sky was trapped in a curtain of gray ash, a storm pressed in a bottle.

Paul gaped up at the older man, eyes innocent and wide, lips parted, nose bleeding, trailing copper and black. He wondered how long John had wanted to do that, whether it was from the first moment he had heard Paul’s name and realized he was caged too, that there was no way out and he just needed to exert some sort of control over _something_. Paul felt it in a quieter way, in an accepting way that he could never voice, so he left it dangerously fizzing inside to brood and dampen. A vanilla shower of recognition sunk both Paul and John, the contact, the vivacity, the rage, and stiff understanding struck each boy numb, observing and concealing the other.

“You’re bleeding,” John said absently. He was sitting on Paul’s legs, making them numb and needled, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. His expression was guarded, inferno dying in bronzed, silken eyes as he had cooled, as it were, but even at the pinnacle of danger, at his most rancorous and capless moment, a vibrancy poured forth and decorated him in a most beautiful, broken fashion. Paul was enraptured, captivated, _controlled_.

“Yes,” Paul replied, a panting, accidental sliding whisper, slightly sitting up on his elbows, shoulder blades lifting and setting. He could feel the wetness kissing his skin, a stain of burgundy, champagne bliss.

John blinked, made a move to touch the blood just above Paul’s lip, as if to see if the red were real, to see if Paul were real, fingers an image of sincerity, of caution, an expression of concern seasoning his face before it turned to noir and reeled off, thinking better of contact, sitting back and standing above Paul, the stained sky a warning. His face was a blanched mix of denim obscure and bewildering loathing before turning and stalking out of the garden, an apparition in his wake.

 

***

 

A storm gave way to ardent, raucous rain minutes after John disappeared, leaving Paul to wander about the grounds in the wet confusion, avoiding the strategically placed rouge guards out of embarrassment, dress shoes sloshing through the muddied grass like hopscotch before a worried Brian Epstein spotted him from the cream veranda sanctuary and ushered him inside.

“What in God’s name happened? Goodness, your _nose_! Oh my, where is John?” Brian examined Paul’s gushing nose; the rain had given it new life where it otherwise would have just dried. Paul stifled the animalistic instinct to roll his eyes. Of course John would be a concern in the situation where Paul is found walking aimlessly around the gardens of Buckingham Palace in a thunderstorm after taking a fist to the face.

“It’s just a bloody nose, the cold weather and all, y'know. John went inside to get help,” Paul lied through his teeth like a martyr, tying himself to a post and letting himself drown with it.

Brian twittered about in refined worry, spouting desires about finding Paul new clothes and bandages all while Paul silently requested that he might go home, that he’d rather just postpone again. His encounter with “His Highness, Heir to the Throne of Arsehole, Duke of Selfish Personal Issues” had dampened his zest considerably, but Paul didn’t bring up their skirmish, could tell Brian valued John in all his heroic faults over Paul’s wellbeing despite the other being in the obvious wrong.

So, five minutes to dinner, Paul sat in the loo, peeling off wet trousers and a translucent shirt to put on a pair borrowed secretly from John’s wardrobe, allowing Brian to obsess over his face (“Oh dear, is that _bruising?_ ”) and comb the knots from his damp hair. Paul insisted it wasn’t worth the trouble, but Brian insisted it was _no_ trouble, sending him off to the banquet hall, a lamb to the slaughter.

A subdued frustration lurked in Paul’s continual worries, a chronic ache in his knees, a never-ending thumping at his temples. His borrowed shoes hit the carpet. There was a little too much space at his toes and he couldn’t lace them tight enough. The shirt was a size or so too large and the pants too baggy, but a belt attempted to fix all the problems. Paul felt like an idiot entering the dining room, his presence announced obediently by a guard at the door, “His Grace, the Duke of Cambridge!”

Paul winced and stood before the table covered in white and red flowers, grapes and figs, wine and glass bottles of coke, extravagancies akin to that of a Grecian feast, which served the Queen, John, and much to Paul’s chagrin, Paul’s father. Paul could’ve scoffed at the arrangement, the garish table place, the seating arrangement, the two adults at the end of the long table with the Queen at the head and Paul’s father just to the right, the two younger Dukes at the end of the table, sitting across from the other. The three figures gave notice to Paul, Mimi’s stare burning holes in borrowed vestments, Paul’s father obviously noticing Paul’s disheveled appearance and disapproving, and John practically beaming and overflowing with a milky conviviality.

“'allo, luv,” John shot a devilish smirk to Paul, mouth soft and fierce, fresh-cut lemon satisfaction, a multitude of paradoxes that made Paul’s skin prickle.

“John, be civil,” Mimi reprimanded, “Do sit, Paul.”

John squinted his eyes at Mimi before turning back to Paul, extending his hand across the table in false amicability as Paul approached, “Hi Paul, I’m Civil, nice to meet your acquaintance.”

Mimi sighed, the work of twenty years weighing on her shoulders, shifting to Jim McCartney to feud over a kind of meaningless politics that Paul never could find the time to comprehend or invest. Paul’s eyes found a fond solace in the white lace of the table cover, not John, _never_ John, who had made him into a plaything in under a quarter of an hour. In that large, lofty room, Paul’s inner, suppressed seclusion surged and roared with new life. The roast beef on his plate gazed up at him longingly, lonely; Paul dug his fork into it to silence his own imagination.

Sizeable as the banquet hall was, Paul could only look in so many different directions, study so many tree paintings, the rain-sopped windows, the plain ceiling, before laying rest on the auburn-brown-haired man in front of him, pursing his lips and resting his chin on his fist in amused faux endearment.

“Honey, don’t ignore me, it wounds me so,” John pantomimed a dagger piercing his heart, expression slackening, nimble fingers slipping into the sheer front breast pocket to thumb at a cigarette, using a candle off the table to light it, inhaling deeply and slumping in his chair a tad following the movement. Metallic soot smoke curled in the air and dissipated. The churning of the ocean writhed in Paul, collided and broke upon his beach. John could be his own sardonic self, could rebel against every rule placed down like brick, step down upon it, but no soul would tell him otherwise. And that was precisely what Paul knew the council had tried to shield from his eyes: the very structure of this boy—rebellion, lawlessness, sheer brute freedom and a passion blind and bold that so shattered Paul’s very upbringing of rules and draconian enforcement. John was an opposite. In every way that Paul thought he could revolt, slick his hair back, pop his collars and slip on his leathers, charge the radio so loud the reinforcements shook, John took it a step further; _John did it for real._ And John knew it, the self-righteous bastard, because beneath it all, something was broke and bent and made him angry, so wrathful and undone at the seams that his fabric was no good anymore, and Paul could see it in his face, could hear it in his words beneath all his faultless jeers and sarcasm, that there was something sad and blue. And he’d only just met him hours ago was the peculiar thing. He felt as though he’d known John in another life. The whole thing was of delicate sublime.

 _“I think he’s misunderstood,”_ Ringo’s words toppled in Paul’s head as he studied John, his arranged husband, plucking at the uniform skirt of one of the maids, hand that so forcefully met Paul’s face a bit back now feather-lightly traced against her velvet cream thigh, mouth turned up into a chaste deleterious smile, eyes sparked and direct, _“The John everybody meets isn’t the John you get,”_ John danced his fingertips across the paled peach expanse of her skin, lips forming some unspoken words that Paul would never hear, some sweet nothings to get inside her panties, while Mimi and Jim sat far down the table engrossed in foreign policy and domestic contracts to not notice a damn thing, _“He’s much more complex than the surface shows, if that makes any sense,”_ the girl was practically in John’s lap now, molding into John’s hands, which, Paul annoyingly noticed were carefully shaped and gracefully curved despite any callousing or cracks, twirled in her blonde hair strategically, as he glanced round her cheek to leer at Paul and stare gleefully.

 _Maybe it’s all for show._ Paul taunted himself with the indulgent sweet, honey and lies.

Paul studied the bird, a shy poppy in a disconnected field, not much going on up north, and refused to let her slender figure and melting syrupy nectared giggles tray John’s attentions. Eyes darting across the table with a black, nasty jealousy, Paul licked off a test of the brown sauce covering the beef from the supple pad of his thumb. The girl gasped out, _“John,”_ light and feathery perfumed powder blown into Paul’s face. It was accented. French possibly?

“Johnny, dear, do try this gravy and tell me if it needs more spice, my tasting's all wrong tonight,” Paul spoke in his buttery posh voice, dripping in a blameless, bare-footed sincerity, reaching across the table with a spoonful of the sauce to chisel the temperament between the opposite sexes creating a friction of stealth that was such a nuisance to Paul.

“Cheeky,” John huffed from around the neck of the bird, reaching for the spoon from a feigning-harmless Paul and dipping it past his lips experimentally so, indulging and playing along, patiently aware, “S’fine. Quit yer fussing 'nd shut up.”

“And the beef? Seems a little on the dry side,” Paul sent his fork over and John glared at it. Must’ve been something special to witness, John with a bird hooked round his neck, accepting utensils of delicately prepared food from his state-bound Paul, a self-accepted state of obligation that he couldn’t ignore the other young man as he could everybody else, the logic that Paul was his equal and would receive that respect in the form of adhering to his immature, playful requests with full knowledge of his intentions. The girl sighed, disappointed and burdened, a willow in distress. John held her in place when she made a move to shift away, locking eyes with Paul as he grabbed the fork and bit into the meat, taking the whole piece in his mouth, “Exquisite,” he hissed between chews, and then the girl slipped off and trotted away, dissatisfaction lifting in her wake, a clearly disenfranchised John not watching her go, but narrowing his forces at Paul who ate his dinner happily across the way.

“Thank you, _luv_ ,” Paul pressed his lips into a kiss, batting his eyelashes in long elegant movements, aiming for sultry and sex, not missing a beat. And a war surrounded just the two of them in that illustrious palace, in that grandiose dinner hall, at that undulating table for the gods, a clash of personalities and a clash of wills, of reservation and silence, of upheaval and fury.

By dessert, reticence had suffocated the very delight from conversations and the two young men abandoned to their individual spheres of irritation, a flicker of madness for each to their own. A dainty young lady with short, new-in-fashion hair served small finger delicacies to the participants, making her rounds cheerfully whilst another served tea.

The dessert girl trotted over to Paul, “Cake?” she gleamed, an animated fairy, clearly excited to be in the presence of a new, handsome young gentleman that she might impress.

Paul smiled warmly, could practically feel her falling to his charm as most always did eventually if not immediately within the first five minutes of an encounter with pretty boy Paul, “Oh, yes please.”

The bird blushed and bloomed, an effervescent pink, like that of a new spring or the unalloyed tip of a sunset, not fiery and lit, but subdued and tender.

Across the table though, John was her reverse, burning up the atmosphere burgundy. He snorted, “You sure? That baby fat'll never come off yer cheeks if you keep stuffin' cake inside 'em.”

Paul glared. The serving girl blushed so hard, it looked as though her head might pop off, pressure rising, before she edged away with her plate of cavities. John puffed on his cigarette triumphantly. Paul averted his stubborn gaze.

At the door, standing facing one another in the fantastic entrance hall, the goodbyes were brief, only elongated by Mimi’s cries of, “Shoes, John!” as she sighted John’s black heeled boots beneath his tailored, hemmed dress pants, the kind worn by the Teddy Boys that hung around bars and greased their hair back and wore their leathers and drainies and black t-shirts to make the older generation scowl and moan at their cool indifference, which Paul longed to be like and John already was.

John ignored her wailing, eyes only for Paul.

“McCartney,” John lulled, forming it perfectly between his teeth, a clash of symbols at the “c.” It was a statement of threat, a curse.

“Lennon,” it sounded odd in Paul’s mouth, breathy almost, short and cut off.

There was a wall put up between them, a cement and rock structure that separated their beating hearts and yearning, passionate, empty souls, blinding them from the obviousness that each could give the other. Paul exited in a reserved, glowing frustration, John standing in haughty authority at the golden-bannistered, swooping staircase, keeping a measured distance.


	5. A Cavern in the City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so this chapter alludes sort of to events of real life. It was so, so fun to write this one. Please enjoy! P.S. there might not be any updates for a bit because these next few weeks look really busy for me :/

Paul refused to answer George’s calls for a period of three solemn, wastelandish days, the resurrection of Christ. Dew and rain came and went as Paul moping about echoed underneath the polished floors of Kensington Palace, a sorry sight for the pure of heart, of which George most certainly was. Each round the butler, Neil, appeared by the mahogany door, expression professional and sharp where concern should have lain, a clip of ginger, Paul braced himself for the obvious, “Master Harrison is here to see Your Grace,” to which Paul most often returned, “Tell him the Duke is indisposed,” turning back to his guitar and blank papers as uselessly and cotton dense as before. He hadn’t been able to write a single fucking verse since his meeting with John, couldn’t think in straight lines or toned colors either, and the sedentariness was driving Paul up a wall, missing something unidentifiable lifting and turning underneath all those emotions the guitar couldn’t put speech to for him.

It was agony, a shard of crooked wire in his skin, dirt under short nails, drunk and weary from overthinking and spacing out.

The morning light passed slow and tired, casting whiskey gold through the tall windows on the far wall. Paul slunk back on a chaise like a dying heroine beneath a sheer robe as her portrait was stolen before life drained forever from her rose lips and porcelain cheeks, a blasé trance coined in his eyes as Mike revealed his latest photographs. They all looked the same, black and white, paper-thin worthless.

“They’re good,” Paul sighed, arm draped to barely brush the floor, dropping the last in the pile on the patterned carpet with the others. The touch dripped like paint when he released them.

“You said that about the last twenty,” Mike stated, facing down at his brother with those sad, dumb eyes of his, concern a nuisance of his features.

Paul paused as if in intensive thought, biting his finger, “They’re all good.”

“Ten were blurry,” Mike retorted, disbelieving.

“Still good. It’s supposed to be art, innit?” Paul’s voice bordered on bored angry, emphasizing his consonants.

Mike knelt to gather the photographs like bits of body parts blown off in war, a wilting flower in the sun’s rays; “Stayin' indoors for so long has made you batty.”

Paul flipped to his stomach so he didn’t have to look at Mike’s mug, locking his ankles in a curtsied cross and exhaling dramatically.

“Dear brother, yer concern softens me heart,” Paul traced his fingers along the carpeting, a gift from the Princess of Kenya, “but Paulie’s a big boy now and doesn’t need daddy to hold his hand anymore.”

Mike rolled his eyes, “I invited George over for two. Get off yer arse and 'ave a bath; yer startin' to look like a charity case, you are.”

Paul gasped, torn mock-offense, “I’ll have you know, I met the _Queen_ twice.”

Mike turned off in the other direction down the long slate corridor, light bleeding in through the paint, back to his brother, huffing out a typical, snobby, “Whatever,” voice drifting away from Paul, but he heard it nonetheless.

Paul fiddled with his ivory shirt buttons anxiously. He had no intention to discuss dinner with his new, least favorite husband-to-be, with his good ol’ pal George. He was most certain the magnet in George’s brain would attract to the topic as soon as he smelled blood in the water that was Paul’s disastrous dinner date. The days had been spent in contemplation, fruitless reflection, in processing exactly what had happened with the other boy. It made little sense. John had socked him stupid, true, but then it had been so easy to talk, when they actually _did_ talk, falling into a melody that both had heard years ago and could form the words perfectly in their mouths like a prayer; neither would admit to the other that this was true, and that was a rust injury in itself. The taunting hadn’t meant a toss to Paul, for underneath it something shook and awoken, brash and bold and _gorgeous_ that Paul could feel in his veins, an echo of a bell. Momentum and shockwaves pouring off of John had made Paul nauseous and confused, made him muddy when he thought of the curve of John’s mouth, the low growl of his lemon-tanged voice at the back of his throat, squinted bleary eyes of sarcasm and sun. Yet, at the helm, John was _unkind_ and forceful, a sort of disorderly madness that put Paul on edge and tore at his wallpaper, crude and careless, like the day taking time from the night each morning. He was accented in such a twisted way, in such a luring fashion, that his danger and absence chased in Paul’s thoughts long after he had abandoned.

Thoughts spun round Paul’s head in a nauseating dance of mockery, of scenarios and sin and perjury that confirmed Paul to foolishness and sent him to bed with a headache each night.

 

***

 

George took Paul out to the cinema in town, treated him to the chippy stand, the more expensive one with the longer line, and not once mentioned his absence or the definite reason behind his absence. They sat on the smooth church steps, that grand sloping limestone monster that towered to the sky, that called on the very God in Heaven above, and ate with greasy fingers and tamed tongues, wiping hands on pants and watching the oily streaks run like lines of poetry, because why ruin a calm early fall afternoon with talks of marriage and the end of freedom. As the long-legged girls scurried by, pulling at their curls and pulling at their skirts, George and Paul nodded, observing with interest, lapses of lace skin and powdered cheeks like in the magazines. It was a show they didn’t have to put money on the table to see.

A dying sky painted the shade of hot nectar called to Paul to come home. Dusting off his drainies and ducking to go, George grabbed his arm, a sly _where’re you goin’, boyo?_ snaking on his lips. Paul could’ve hit the kid, clapped him at the back of his head where his greased ducktail was combed to a crest.

“This has been fun, but really, Geo, I must go,” Paul shed an embarrassed, almost unapologetic smile.

“Don’t talk like a bird to me, Paulie, I haven’t seen yer ugly arse for half a week,” George spoke more boldly than he’d ever done, and Paul couldn’t process the confrontation, not from George, who wasn’t supposed to do that kind of thing; he was just supposed to say “aye” to whatever _Paul_ wanted to do.

“George, it’s been a—,” Paul started up tiredly.

“I don’t know what that John kid did to yer head, son, but he’s a rot bastard an' a pub would do you some wonder right now, I do know tha',” George said, smiling with his crooked teeth and still-babyface, that contrasted ridiculously with his words.

“A pint or two, tha’s all,” Paul settled firmly, agitated.

George spirited like a child.

 

***

 

The Cavern Club was a more well-known nightclub that George and Paul frequented only on special occasions, due to the amount of people and popularity, which often drew attention to Paul. _“Oh, it’s that Duke fellow” “Rather cute, isn’t he?” “His father’s the third wealthiest man in England!”_ Is how the birds fluttered about, whispering indiscreetly amongst themselves, eyes stuck on Paul’s face and clothes, wondering his wealth and worth aloud, a disgusting habit. Paul rocked like wood, steeling glances about the low, carrying ceilings that dripped like rain when the sweat and mist rose and clung to the painted cold brick like a sinner before a saint. The crowd was an emaciated and thin child tonight, couples drifting about lazily, not very invested in their Monday nights as a raging storm, but more often fancied a night in. The forms were spread thin across the floor, which had been cleared of chairs, shadows cascading down the walls in ashen black smudges, dull silver.

Despite the lack of an audience, a make-shift rock n’ roll group occupied the stage, standing tall at the arched roof like a pack of guardian angels. Their sound slapped off the cracks in the paint and beat on the floors, enriched and lively, albeit a little off and uncoordinated, like someone kept missing a note each verse. The members wore shiny leather jackets, the good kind from Germany, collars popped in a dangerous, offstandish way, that drew Paul in like a son. Greased hair and through the cigarette smoke, Paul took a step nearer, to feel their warmth and flow, to recognize with a sickness in his stomach someone old and someone new, someone borrowed, a hazy blue. John stood before the microphone, unseeing eyes seeing all, flicking out at the emptied Cavern as if he didn’t give much of it, but full of explosion and energy, a let loose firecracker indoors, a smudge of oiled black against the cream backdrop. His voice was grainy sugar kerosene, he was tongue between teeth coarse, and Paul couldn’t take his goddamn eyes off of him, each word of Elvis’ “That’s All Right” lifting him up and taking him down. Each beat rung through in his strained voice, words pulled and twanged, stretched and used; Paul felt frozen in place, mesmerized and, ultimately, impressed. John was something else in his leathers, a different person altogether, and the taunt proclaimed itself in every sharp intake of breath, every movement of his commanding fingers sliding along the neck of the guitar, each pronounced, breathy syllable into the wired checker-stitch of the microphone; John was _sex_ on that stage, but he didn’t just make love to the crowd, didn’t promise it roses and sweet kisses of gentility and rare chivalry, he whispered hot and filthy lies into its ears and beguiled it to commit adultery for him and God dammit, Paul would’ve if it weren’t for George, a pillar of inadvertent, anchoring conscience by his side. The song ended and reverberated under Paul’s skin, embedded in his jittery muscles. Shuffling ensued on the stage as they prepared for another song and George clapped, startlingly loud, along with a few other audience members. George was vivid, smiling with spiked teeth and all.

“Pretty gear, aren’t they?” he turned to Paul, who stood stock-still.

Paul watched John command the others about the stage, pointing and motioning. He was a right professional, he was.

“Paul?” George plumed and Paul was tearing tunnels into John’s profile, livid.

“That’s him, Geo; that’s the rot bastard,” Paul nodded solemnly to John on stage, still blissfully unaware of their presence.

“Wha'? No,” George gawked, because John wasn’t supposed to be cool and suave and standing on a stage, mouth-fucking everyone’s darkest, lust-filled thoughts. John, in George’s mind, was supposed to be a quiet, book-reading, poof, didn’t like loud noises and never had the thumps when Jerry Lee Lewis was put on the record. But, John was everything; he filled the whole Cavern with his confidence and persona, so much so that Paul couldn’t breathe and George had never been more alive.

He could tell George wasn’t going to listen if he was going to listen to John and his band that had plunged headfirst into “Come Go With Me.” It was a joke to listen to them play it, John skipped most of the words aside from the chorus, making them up as he went, all too aware of their lack of an audience with a lack of a music preference.

A few listeners began to clap along to the song and it fueled the performers to haul forward experimentally. The chorus of cupped fingers hitting the strings, surges of desperate flames. John was the anti-gentleman, the savior of the blue jeans and tinted shades, breathing hard and talking heated into the mic to thank the crowd for sitting still and not rushing the stage all at once, sneering into his words at his own joke, running a hand through his sweat-slick hair, which wasn’t as long as the rest of them, probably because of Mimi, and hung against his forehead instead of slicked back and raw.

The crop of musicians packed up their instruments in a little side room excommunicated from the crowd, as another band began to set up, and Paul found his legs carrying himself over to John whose arm was wrapped around the waist of some little blonde thing, talking down to her. Paul was hyperaware of the leather of his boots hitting the floorboards, of the cricket lighter in his pocket, of the blood rushing to the tips of his cold dazed fingers. Chestnut hair and aloof, John turned as Paul was close enough, Paul who was tempting the crimson embers to burn him, and for a moment, the older boy’s face was a blank page. Paul could sense George pittering off behind him out in the open through the doorway, not close enough to hear, but close enough to watch, miles away through a broken glass lens. 

“You’ve got a band?” Paul forced his voice level. He wouldn’t look at the girl. Only at John. There was something irritated under the layers, that John wouldn’t open up to Paul, that he had kept this a story of his own, huddled under blankets so Paul couldn’t ask about it, couldn’t take it away from John. Ribbons of hope stung like mint in the air as Paul observed John for a reply.

“What of it?” John said, aggressive defenses, shock thick and frigid. He lit a fag, cupping the flame, as he wouldn’t want to share that with Paul either. The orange glow lit up his features for a moment, concentrated and coarse and definitively handsome.

Absently, Paul observed with an estranged, choked off frustration, the motion of John’s thumb rubbing gentle circles against the bird’s arm. Metal hit stone and Paul felt the dull blade of jealousy pressing against the soft of his stomach, it wasn’t much, but it was enough to raise questions within Paul to worry about later, staring at the dark ceiling, a mess of confusion keeping him awake.

“You play well,” Paul stated as objectively as he could. He kept his expression flat, eyes slack, indifferent.

And John just stared at him, the heavy ivory scrutiny cutting the air like string through butter. “Mimi sent you, did she?” John’s voice was biting, was meant to be, chalk dust through the window bleak, demanding. Suddenly looming over Paul, John was a mountain, a terror, intertwined with ivy at dusk.

“No,” Paul snapped and John looked surprised, like he didn’t expect such a pretty face to make such a mean noise with his sweet little mouth.

Silence burned like incense and fell like a curtain over the two. The fidgeting of the blondie glued to John’s side buzzed like a broken clock. She was observing Paul uncomfortably, had been ever since she registered his boyish form standing before her, and felt the drawn-out need to fill the stirred silence with a forced, cliché introduction of, “I’m Cynthia, by the way, John’s girlfriend,” to which Paul said without ignoring a beat, without taking his eyes off of John’s lidded, bemused eyes, “A pleasure. I’m Paul, John’s betrothed.” Her face was a china plate, fragile and fog, and when Paul looked at her, he looked through her, could see she was empty air and liquid vapor.

“I play guitar too,” Paul crisped, back to John; he could feel the anger brimming in his chest, sore knuckled and tired. His eyes lingered down to John’s black and tan Rickenbacker leaned against the wood of the door.

John crossed his arms, looking at Paul down his nose, feeling the age difference as a gift bestowed upon him in this very moment, strangers by direct choice, “Shouldn’t you be gettin' back now, Paulie? Mummy must be awful worried.”

Paul winced and growled, meeting John’s glare, “Shut yer goddamn gob, 'nd give it here.” John narrowed. He aimed his horns to puncture, but ceased and held. It was bold and sapphire, grating against Paul’s ribs, a moment of brilliance, and John hesitated at a crossroad of trust, an imbalance of power, turning to Cynthia to whisper words into her hair, watching her as she giggled and trotted over to help Stu, the bloody prick, before handing the instrument over to Paul like a squirming, kicking infant. He accepted it, sitting down on a rogue amp, cradling the item on his lap.

Diffidence claiming his hands, he flipped the instrument over to play it left-handed and John stopped him.

“Daft lad, give her back,” Superiority gleamed in his eyes and Paul pressed his fingers against the nylon, feeling the familiar cutting pressure.

He shook his head and withdrew into himself like he’d been shot, “No! Just wait; I promise,” it sounded like a plea; he drew his fingers across the cords, unwinding honey sound like string, leaning over the guitar reverently, charcoal hair hanging low against his forehead. The sound was wrong, echoed awkwardly and Paul chanced a look at an expectant John.

“This isn’t tuned,” he strummed the chords again, pulling a face at the bitter vibrations. John darkened and shifted, “And? If yer gonna be soft 'bout it, I didn’t ask you to play a damn thing,” he extended his hand for it back; Paul grinned. His fingers scurried about, tuning the instrument expertly. John stood back in his own realm of salt, on edge to attack, ready for a slip of the finger, for a misstep he could use to crush the flower under his heeled boot.

Without warning, Paul launched into “Twenty Flight Rock,” sweeping across the guitar. It wasn’t a difficult song, but the pace was high and the energy evident, a hurricane of lyrics and sounds. He dressed up the solo a bit, embellished with nail-scrubbing picks, and danced the words with his best Elvis impression, a light filling his chest, foot thumping along at its own way, a derailed passenger train, watching John’s face as it were, an etched in stone rendition of immovable resolution. He winked a hazel eye as he twanged the words between his lips, “Come over, baby. I'm all alone,” and John quirked an eyebrow, taking a drag of his cigarette. He clipped out the resounding strings, doing something a little fancy at the end with the A-Chord that George taught him, to impress.

When Paul looked to John, notes clinging and fading to the air for forgiveness, the Rickenbacker pressed triumphantly to his chest as he breathed, lulling with each rough inhale, John was _glaring_ , a loaded weapon, and Paul was a statue, the Venus de Milo, a shattered portrait, Ginevra de’ Benci, before John like an offering. His smile faltered a bit, John reaching for his guitar back.

“Yea?” Paul stood.

John shrugged, guitar in hand by his side, “Guess it was alright.” His face was all solid lines and brick-cut, eyes discordant and tyrannical. His laconicism and lack of emotion startled Paul. John folded his arms, waxen straight, cigarette tapered between his thumb and index finger, compressing under the pressure. He wouldn’t take it. Sideboards and bent eyebrows, a snarled pursed frown, John was a canyon, unreachable, untouchable, and Paul had exhausted himself in his pursuits once again. Flustered, but tired more than anything, he tore away from the little room, a comet streaking across the barren sky, burning so fiery for no one to see, nodding to George, red lingering on his cheeks like a battle scar. As they departed, the sound of John’s silence rung achingly in Paul’s ears like a misstep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!!


	6. The Early Stages of John

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go! A JOHN CHAPTER YAY! And of course this took me a full week to write (seriously I added stuff every day and ended up just rewriting the whole damn thing at one point) and it's just super short (It's legit just one scene!!! But I outlined up until the engagement so... also the engagement is NOT the climax seriously I cannot emphasize this early enough, the engagement comes fast, but that's not where things get güd). I mean this was super hard to get down bc John is hard to write he is a complex dude I am telling u. Also, I think it would be good to summarize John's current opinion of Paul before you read this chapter because the language can be a lil confusing at times (basically all the time haha why do i do this). John is fascinated by Paul at this point (thinks he's a rad dude is all), but he's trying to suppress that and ignore that he thinks this way because he thinks it's bad... and will lead to... other thoughts... *wink wink*, that second part isn't touched on that much and it's super vague. Also, look out for those tons of repeated words (ocean/sea, confusion). I think I wrote the word confusion at least ten times and had to fix it lol, I'm tryna drop some hints that he's havin some sad inner John battles. I'd like to personally apologize for the really long sentences. Please enjoy!!!

John spent the first five years of childhood under the care of a drunken father, a fallen Duke, and a lost mother, her direct bloodline to the Queen holding an Icarus tragically out of her own bounds; Julia Lennon flew too the close to the sun and Alfred, too low to the sea, frequently bridging across it and into the unknown, leaving wife and child behind for quarters on end. Below shouting level, the blurred figure of John Lennon laid in the emotional squalor of his parent’s frayed marriage, a handkerchief billowing in a headwind, sweltering crossfire tattering his silk. Music filled the days and Mimi took him away from the undocked forest of disregard that he’d been delving in and out of, brought him to Buckingham Palace and dressed him up in rules and ties and sent him off to meet the world. Control attempted to pin him down and sit him still, but a spirit of deafening individuality threatened to tilt the system and rip it off its very hinges. John lived in the tremendous passion of existing; he would not be contained.

 

***

 

A letter arrived from Kensington Palace in the morning, all smooth parchment and crisp corners, delivered to John upon an antique sterling silver platter, curled designs at the rims. The lifeblood of a newborn October resonated in John that day, free soul and the contour of a brilliant life; he was sketching in the isolated drawing room on the southern side of the palace, a grand cream austere built especially for him, a room that had seen the warfare of extremity in flashes of bordeaux and bronze, and the figs and grapes of creativity that drew forth from this son of Jupiter, had most recently since the boy stumbled home sodding drunk the night before to paint and draw himself into sobriety or oblivion, whichever came first. On the nights of John's escapades, it was left to none other than Ringo to guard the door of the studio ("No one comes in, eh, Rings?" But it wasn't a question in that traditional respect which Mimi and the rest of decaying generation understood, it was a command of privacy, an undisturbed Garden of Eden within the white walls) until the dewey, luscious morning rolled over like a wave and shed blue light through the tapering grand windows in somber clarity. The assistant had collapsed into a worn chaise just as three AM peeled on the grandfather clock down the hall, snoring lightly, just outside the grand cherry oak door, chest collapsing with each weary breath, a picturesque Cupid.

It was now circling nine-thirty, the hum of England heaving itself to consciousness, the letter en route to John's castle of isolation. John’s heady strum of intoxication thumped with assurance, dwindling and sagging in the daylight, fighting for the last edges of secured euphoria as sobriety threatened at the outskirts of his conscience. John had not slept the whole of the night following his gig at the Cavern Club, that cobblestone hysteria, defiant and bold against death itself.

He had returned to Buckingham past midnight; the darkness swallowed him like the ocean, currents of frustration and loathing lapping the coast like a neglected brother, emotions that had no names and dug deeper into his flesh, amplified by alcohol, loud in his ears and angry in his heart, a dagger of rum and coke. Navy clouds, swollen by confusion, accusations of feeling that broke the surface in an avalanche, suffocated the dark room and shouted over the static in his brain to be heard. It was so since John had first met the boy, waves of dark lager hair, onyx eyes doubled with brown and green through the sunlight, cascaded by lose-yourself-eyelashes, a portrait-perfect mouth, and fair skin caressed with the occasional freckle, a seed of interest blooming beneath the chamomile winter. What John experienced refused a name, sat in concentrated, motionless silence. It was not love, for that would require more fervent acceptance, but, a deep interest of which he would not embrace openly to himself. John could see galaxies in Paul's eyes, the sunrise upon his cheeks, the blush of day in his lips, and the glow of night in his expression; it was pure awe, transcending the moment he turned to observe him, a verdant fascination. But John denied, denied, denied, thricefold in the face of God, Peter on a pedestal, and any thought that followed after, officially in a most John manner, blunt non-recognition and a stoic outer shell. He sought to stifle the inspiration, which Paul drew to mind and subdued it with a cranberry bitter indifference.

Because before Paul had entered into the garden and eaten from the tree of knowledge, before John had known of Paul and rested in fragile innocence with Stu that day of the storm, his thoughts flared and fluctuated, a lion of persimmon and coriander, relentless with unsaid, unformed fears that he'd never admit to a soul, never share to another heartbeat, roaring and resounding in his mind like a melody. Their pleas were loud and loose and called to the heavens in anticipation of what would come next, who would come next. The noise was John's song. Yet, then there was Paul, vacant lovely, the crackle of a flame beating against the snowy winter, and suddenly, John heard nothing at all. Yes, Paul was beautiful, John was convinced most everyone with eyes could recognize that, but it was John's hyper-awareness of his own instantaneous silence, against everything that he thought he knew he was, that frightened him most. The silence was Paul's song.

A meadow of inner turmoil and a cord of frustration pressed gentle kisses to John's cheek and danced fingers across his skin, a sultry seduction, a burning terror that called him forth again for the weeks building up to the meeting. Mimi had introduced the idea of this "Paul," this impending "husband" of his in early July, but at that time, "Paul" was just a vague metaphysical concept, twisted in with the air, a cloudy mass, a pie in the sky laughable; he seemed so far away, the constellations, a mere theory to be disproven with time and fade away, forgotten in the ocean.

And John did; for months he ignored "Paul" and his hued existence, went about in shimmering troughs of heat and light, careless and abstract. John had quarreled with Mimi on several occasions on the subject out of mere boredom and curiosity, how far could he press until it burned, but it was empty entertainment and he often assumed that one day she’d break like biscuit and set John free.

 _“Couldn’t have picked a bleedin' woman for chrissake?” John snarled, amusement wine on his tongue. “Paul is a gentleman of the highest rank!” Mimi wailed in injury, taken aback by John’s boldness even after years of rearing him into what was supposed to be a well, proper nobleman. “Plenty of cunts in England to choose from,” John quipped low enough so the woman wouldn’t hear; Mimi was a goddamn platitude, a cliché, olive-colored and textbook monotony. He waited for her to continue; he could read her choreographed pauses like the stars in the sky, but cut in rudely anyway. “Doesn’t matter if he’s a bloody leper, if he’s got money and a left ring-finger, he’d be ‘a gentleman of the highest rank’ to you,” John sauced, smiling cordially in self-proclaimed victory._ Art mimicked life and the way John and Mimi clashed that summer was most certainly a masterpiece to be observed if not fully understood in its splendor.

But in that moment in the garden, months later, "Paul" had a face and a name and was magnificence, nylon whisper and standing in front of John. The reality was stunning, wet electric confusion, a paradoxical vein of illusion as though God had created Paul moments before and set him down gently among the foliage for John's bleary wizened vision to latch onto, nails dug deep in the rock. Cold confrontation seared the air, and where unrest lay, contempt towards the incomprehensible formed in hot volts of velvet and tulle. And where Paul was real, the possibility of a union was too, sweltering and dizzy rivulets in the sun. John was trapped, surely subjectively caged-in by a beautiful soul, painted hazel eyes on porcelain, and a foreboding legal document; as silence met noise, knuckles struck skin and John fell collapsed in two, temper taking control because that's what John needed, two hands in control.

When John would let himself see it, a fracture of artistry to seep through his careful disdain, Paul was the blue radiance of wolves in the distant midnight, poppies in a field of free and new, and appeal rooted deep in all that John saw Paul. So he buried it deep and pressed it betwixt the pages of anger and disinterest and presented it to Paul, satin and satisfied. Melpomene and Thalia cried out to John as a child and he wore his masks to protect himself from himself, capabilities and reverence be damned.

Dreams of Paul visited often, a Grecian pool of lavender luxury that John would trace his fingers through and with before he succumbed to his own resistance. He saw Paul in the flowers tucked in the balanced vases adorning every room and in the pine-sharpened air that howled a glance through the wind in the deep sedentary hours of dusk, and in the Cavern Club the night before, shiny-eyed and blustery, standing in front of John once again. He was a marble statue, dynamic beneath the dull lighting, snow and earth a delicate muse, and John had warily eyed him, practiced and feigned, successful as a broken expression tore at the younger man’s features, cracked in the clay.

John left the Cavern blitzed and eccentric, slumped across himself in foul, murderous grandeur. The early hour was cold and John was hot.

Yet, on this morning, John was light, abundant bliss of heart and head, the seams a perfect fold in his imagination as he scrawled with pencil-thick lines the leaden lips of breathlessness himself. On this candy-red morning in October, John was drawing Paul.

A peak in the youth of day had struck, just as the leaves turn orange in the autumn, the sun curling over the dunes, wherein the fury had calmed and the accusations diminished and John would allow himself this indulgence of Paul, several hours of undiluted glory, still drunk from the night before, to draw Paul's face from memory in a blurry, hazy dream, the mist over a willow, the petals in spring. He was convinced that if he could draw it out, it would let him rest, it would set him free, enchanted refinement cooled sweat on the skin. But it wasn't just beauty, and the fear sunk talons deep, because the night before, John had been convinced that was all Paul was, empty grace, a wanton wonder, yet his guitar wailed a confrontation from its depleted home by the door, _he touched me, he touched me, he touched me, and he was glorious._ He remembered Paul’s nimble fingers skipping and gliding and shifting along the strings fluidly and easily, electric voice as it satiated the back room of the Cavern, alive and eccentric with the song, like he’d written every lyric himself and loved it like a god to its mortals. Eyes filled with dark promises preoccupied John’s shut ones, infused with an enigma of carefree purity and provocative lure. A chancy curiosity tilted with John’s thoughts, dodging in and out of daydreams, of those castaway eternal lips, of a tangled sort of filtered refusal. The boy was danger dressed as an angel, holding that guitar and breathing words into the cluttered oxygen.

John left with the prophecy that Paul was the quiet gloom of the moon, the fluid brilliance of the stars, and the faltering blaze of the sun. The recognition fought him into blind rage, stubbornness preaching cool indifference and suppression until John had dosed himself wild and strung himself thin, cornered and shattered by his own will.

Curvy and leaden, unsure scrapes of silver, the lines stilted down the page, messy and perturbed, a collage of John in the form of Paul. The rainy whisper of the pencil released tension coiled at the muscles clutching to John's shoulders, vision scattered and spinning, seeing in overlapping circular skewed, Paul², mind beginning to fog and pound as a hangover lagged towards the shore, a dot in the distance, clear frigid warning. John's Paul had the long eyelashes of a dove, heart lips and teasing eyes that bore into and beckoned to John "near, my dear, nearer to me still," curved eyebrows and amusement. John’s Paul was slanted slightly as reference to the alcohol, misshapen in physicality, but brutally honest in intent; when John had started, he'd meant every single press of parchment, but grew more hesitant as his senses fought to catch up with his decisions.

In the early winter of John’s educational career, he’d attended the Liverpool College of Art, breeding bad behavior and thought, paint on the walls and pictures in his head. He met Stu and Cyn there; he met the other John Lennon, angry and perplexed, a hand up the skirt and a head in the sky. College did too much for John, boasted his dreams in streaks of red and gold, of an alternative life from the crown. It convinced him that nothing was real, and it pulsed candidly on the canvases habituating the floors of Stu’s apartment, in the graffiti blaspheming the graveyard across town.

Here, there, and everywhere on John’s drawing, dotted little phrases of drunken poems that he'd written, mussed penmanship blossoming like buds, “I”’s like canes, “Y”’s slurping in on themselves, every letter bound and strung together, intertwined with the page and with the art, with Paul, so much so that John was convinced the real Paul had woken in the morning with the words stuck in his head, a gift.

The raps at the door stoked John to the present, to the Master of the House, Brian, a totem pillar in the wine-dark sea, filling it with propriety; John opted to ignore.

“Your Majesty,” Brian drawled, parsimonious yet persimmon. He stood quite erect, a lightness cradling across his shoulders as he waited in abandoned, abundant patient expectance for John to question his presence and that of the silver platter.

The prince had no regard for visitors on this morning, engulfed in his own artificial solitude that settled in the room, a potent heat. With his head bent to the page, he looked younger, purer, mouth twisted in concentration, eyes peering into the white and the lines. His Buddy Holly glasses, smudged lenses and untouched, rested on the table next to an empty scotch glass that once held amber-thick brandy.

“A letter, Your Majesty,” Brian peppered, Parisian dainty oppression; John straightened his neck towards the other to pull a face, crossing his eyes and tufting out his cheeks, before returning once again to his work. Distractedly, he noticed the dirt beneath his nails, the cracked scabs above his cuticles, and a colony of merlot bruises tarnishing the pale of his knuckles, swollen and plum, a night of drunken rogue. He covered his hands in each other, hiding fugitives.

“Alright then, read it to me if it’s so important,” John spoke downward to the paper, infused with disinterest and emphasized fatigue.

“His Grace the Duke of Cambridge has extended an invitation to Your Majesty to attend a hunting outing this Friday,” Brian spoke with trained fragility, something akin to sincerity bleeding in, and John felt sorry for him for only a breath.

John grumbled into his fist, resting his chin on it blasély; he remembered Paul in a hazy, complicated way, flipping his sketch over, cheeks a mango warmth.

“I’ll be detained,” John immediately filled in flatly. He told himself he would, wanted it to be sure just as the clouds in the sky, that he would not be present.

“Her Majesty the Queen has already accepted on Your Majesty’s behalf,” Brian swirled quickly, almost with enjoyment, saccharine malevolent.

“Why the ever-lovin' fuck did ya think it necessary to talk to _me_ about it, then?” John felt a twitch of anger, a rush of it flooding his lungs as he noticed Brian with his usual preserved emotion, composed as John was keyed and ready to detonate. Glass breaking, the trounce of a waterfall sailed in his ears, hot and volatile, and he knew Brian could perceive it, drenched in rain and sea spray, dense in the atmosphere, could almost hear it like a choir of chimes.

Brian was a challenge, his grace and poise a statement against the façade, tearing at John’s thoughtlessness, his fuzzy torment. It was as though Brian knew before anyone else what John was experiencing, what he was so measurably withholding from Paul and from himself, that awe and fascination that he would not claim. As Brian observed John pleasantly, he could see through his filthy, stunted lie.

“Out.”

John pressed the word through thin lips, dragging his incisors against the chapped bottom one, the color of mountains.

Venom and depravity, the room felt smaller when Brian had left. John pressed his head to the table, a disaster clawing up inside him, humming like a tornado of anxiety, rolling his fingers over each other to feel his own skin beneath it, the crescent of short nails, the click of his wrist when he moved it just right. The feeling grounded him to the moment, moaning for heartsease he could drift into and remain. Beneath a multitude of irritation that claimed the sickly soundlessness, the gentle, repressed flute of excitement glowed as a firefly in the darkness of John’s veins, that he would see Paul once more. He ignored this immediately, shoving the sketch away and under a stack of records to be forgotten; the action was staged and John would surely not be able to disregard it. The iron weight of a fully developed hangover sat upon John’s valiant indifference, and folding his arms to cushion his head, he shut his eyes and let the morning consume and disregard him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! I love you all!!


	7. Let us Escape unto the Forest then

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Holidays!!! Sorry this took forever to write! It was another really tough chapter that I had to write and rewrite and re-edit like fifty times! Also, I attempted to tone down the poetic stuff a lil bit for John's POV. Anyway, here you go-- a really short hunting scene where they don't actually shoot anything and just misunderstand each other basically lol. Enjoy!!!

Wednesday arose and sunk quietly, a weary, sun-bleached bleary morning of periwinkle. Thursday roared and plunged, a torrent of horses’ hooves on the sunken soft prairie floor, chests heaving, momentum a monsoon. And Friday came like a skipped heartbeat, unsure and stuttered, some kind of mistake.

Leather boots and a high collar, John stood in the foyer of Kensington Palace, making faces in the grand antique mirror mounted on the wall, hyper-aware of the claret velvet press of a box against the soft his stomach through two layers of wool suit. Bug-eyed, he amused himself, tongue between teeth, he forgot himself, nose scrunched and taut, he placed himself out of Kensington Palace, out of reach for a moment, from priority. The mood of John was sarcastic pliable that day, smooth disguise, accepting of dare, cleaned clear to stoke the fire. Amber and chestnut, John was ashen smoke baptized through a stained-glass window. In his mind, he thought he could understand himself in the moment, could grasp what he was and who Paul presented himself as in screaming flashes of discordance and demure frustration, but really, he had no idea and the day smirked down in arrogant knowledge. He let his expression slacken and smooth to change abruptly once more into something grotesque. The country felt painted stagnant, stuck in space, dried in the moment aside from John’s own beating heart. Anticipation swallowed the room as he waited for dark hair and caramel distant eyes.

Paul. Who was Paul to John? No one, John would tell John, no one. It was a game he’d play with himself, a black and white checkerboard, skipping cracks in the sidewalk, because if John was held, he wouldn’t be able to retreat unscathed, washed in the flames, consumed by inexplicable passion.

Footsteps against extravagance, a blurred smudge to the reflection, stood Paul, the careful, lulled cadence of his honeyed thick voice, “Done playing?” He was basil eyes and corduroy mint, marred from the night at the Cavern, shattered exuberance of exaggerated abhorrence gleaming at his jaw. His fingers tugged at his hems, threatening threads, anxiously or perfectly content, it wasn’t clear. Rose tint roared in his cheeks and hued his lips as he formed words in intoxicating bliss. It had been a desert since John had heard the other’s voice, but that was something he’d stuff in his pocket and leave for the angels.

“Give us five minutes, would ya,” John pandered absently, huffing his breath into fog on the glass and drawing profanities, protecting his sanity, crossing his intentions off in the sand. If he could avoid any genuine conversation, then he wouldn’t connect, wouldn’t feel a damn thing—John’s logic was muddled in this palace across the way.

A wet breeze rattled the windows, cold hissing through, wailing for John’s attention, _please please me, please please me,_ like a pretty bird, pliable with fingers. Paul had picked the rainiest, most miserable day of the year to knock birds out of the sky, that was for sure.

“I’d rather just get this over with,” Paul was expressionless, faceless, a fresh blanket of snow; some grand revelation seemed to simmer beneath it in a writhing torch of bewildering excitement, like a fight that reared and tore at the cage of Paul’s body and threatened to escape if John could light it.

“Nobody asked what  _you’d_ rather do, now did they, son?” John emitted sparks, delight and amusement awakening in ringlets of brunette. Paul was the condensed repose of disinterested interest, lightening crackling against his moonless, indigo twilight sky.

A hindrance of keen, unwarranted indigence, John remembered the box in his pocket and stilled to turn, prickles pressed to his skin.

Ebony ink flowed through him. Paul was standing on the landing, a stream of cursive, outlines in shadows, weaving words that spoke sunsets and downfalls to John’s soul. Crystalline chandeliers drew in brilliance and Paul graced his frame with a navy jumper, what would have been soft to the touch, shades of noir, a leather and shearling overcoat, and blazer dark pants tucked into jet rubber boots. A frown tipped his lips cross and pouty, eyes clear and unfiltered, looking directly to John, an eloquent, forgotten harmony he chased with his eyes but couldn’t grasp for himself; it didn’t seem real.

“If yer gonna be a prick about it, you can take yer arse back to yer castle and sit on it for the rest of the day,” Paul tattered, folding his arms. The foyer was empty, dust and hallucinating, mind-saturating silence consuming the hall, as though John held force in his heart and could use it to level cities.

A stalemate threatened to burn them both. In an indistinct, frustrated candor, inventing ignorance but surpassing his own resolve nonetheless, John remembered the box. Heat built behind his visage, apricot and brick.

“Alright then, _darlin’,_ lead the way,” John clicked, charisma and venom, mellifluous cyanide, and Paul traced through the palace’s patterns, plush airy paintings depicting love and loyalty, carpeting of gold and maroon, rich cream upholstery dotted silver and golden, and grand billowing curtains that curled and wafted; the place was as in a dream of bubblegum and lovely lies of love. It was a sickness, creeping behind the walls and in the floorboards, a carefully planned portrait, painted with fake and typical, almost boring in presentation, the candy smiles of the dames in the paintings, their peaches-and-cream dresses, pastries of fatigue and unreached desire masked by wealth. But, John followed too, behind a stiff, restless Paul, the sweep of his shoulders, clunky boots and all, exiting through windowless scenery to the stables.

The morning felt death, unwarned, atypical tranquility.

“D'you ride?” Paul nodded, level, trained civility, to an impressive row of horses of night and chestnut and mahogany, muscles padded and pliable, shifting beneath shiny coats, swaying against the murky afternoon. Paul reached a hand to touch the muzzle of one of the creatures, delicate misplacement of gaze away from John.

John had ridden plenty as a wee lad, his Uncle George showed him when he was still alive, and they’d map out the Buckingham gardens together as exciting as it was the first time. It was part of the persona, learn to ride and be a gentleman and all that fluff. John replied with coral tart, unnecessarily so, “How dare you even _ask_ ,” a fictional gasp bluffing his words as Paul glared, shoving reigns into his grasp and mounting his own gallant steed, fluid sculpted movement, strength in his thighs, boots swinging out wide and rushed. Clearly, Paul did this often and something akin to envy spiked in John’s awareness, that the other had that stability all to himself.

The two royals rode silken-hide purebreds across the haze to the awaiting party of guards and supervisors, as was customary, for who would trust the two boys alone in the English forest with guns, a set of corralled doves, chasing each other nowhere, a soot-smudged fairytale. He traced Paul’s dark head bobbing against the misty, concerned nature as it spun by in a watercolor of gray and pinched, diluted green.

Processions ensued, overly gratuitous handshakes and plastered china smiles tainting the nature, until the hunt commenced with the unleashing of the hounds and the pair stalking off into the high grass with some leeway, precisely measured freedom from God’s eyes cutting down the clouds. The horses and the dutiful countrymen sworn to protect the crown stayed behind and John remembered the box as it relaxed and shifted in his pocket.

John couldn’t see much through the fog, the sure imprints of Paul’s boots in the wet, that Paul was there, five feet to his right, peering into the thick and capturing naught too. The wood of the rifle closed into John’s hands, metal supple and tame, the weight of power pulling John’s shoulders down, chest thudding, skipping stones across serenity. But there was Paul. Umber overcoat concealing his figure, dark eyes catching John’s every other staggered moment, searching the older boy’s face for something abstract or permanent, it was an affair of muted azure and a glossy berry in the unplanned. Neither shot a single animal for over thirty minutes, glancing in and out of self-assurance and ignored exasperation, chiffon fortification.

It was a sinking boat of anxiety is what it was. Paul ripped the hull, board by board a flurry of nails, as John took down the sails, each minute trickling by an eternity. John felt obligated. Didn’t he? The breath of the wood and cardamom lack of communication shifted tectonic plates yet neither would initiate action, despite plenty of game roaming the royal plot. Paul would glance over to John in question, lingering innocence a guest on his face, and John would return as John would, in his essence shrouded in gray rain, squinty eyes, worn leather, biting sarcasm and fragile stone beneath.

A rabbit scampered under brush unscathed and the lustrous sterling tranquility broke in streaks, John’s voice stained fuchsia, splintering and colliding, “Would you shoot somethin' already?”

Painted blue lavender, characteristic sleek destruction, Paul snapped stolid, juvenile banter, “Why don’t _you_ shoot somethin'?”

The older boy was quick to ignite. “It wasn’t my _brilliant_ idea to hike out to the fuckin’ _amazon_ and make love to Mother Nature, or have you forgotten?” John’s voice echoed in half, ice on tin.

Paul stood at a détente against Elysium Fields, the breeze carding cold against taupe, his expression the kiss of death, red flowers in winter, all misperceptions dark on pavement, pearl in the light.

And watching the press of Paul’s lips, the chill in the air, John remembered the box, squeezing his fists tight and clamped. Rome fell and John soared, grabbing less and less of what he wanted and more of what he needed. He focused all on the younger boy, contrast against the graphite background. Birch resolution warned, resounding echoes in a valley of soot. The anger he’d so recklessly allowed to flourish and direct to Paul carefully lidded, replaced in a cardboard box with wonder and flexibility in the face of this other.

“I can’t,” John stated, emerald truth, words elongated and cinched.

Paul scattered into clovers, holding his rifle upright; it looked dumb, almost childish, how respectable he stood, how he took the object to him reverently, “You what?” the “t” getting lost somewhere in backlashing wind and sincerity pouring like wine. Nervous confusion stippled his face; a battle wore on within, to trust John or excommunicate him, stenciled faint and borrowed.

“Nobody ever bothered to show me. Thought I clawed out of the womb knowin' how to bag a partridge?” He grinned despite himself, the sun behind the flour-whipped sky. Credibility corrupted the fall, tore at the walls they’d built up between each other, and wrote poems of abundance and unfamiliar foreign.  

“I could. Y’know. If you want…” Paul mumbled, tumbling out bashful and tipsy, ducking gaze to the core of the melted earth. A lock of eerie licorice hair dipped in front of Paul’s ear. The wind tangled and interloped with the strands, his disregard a pull.

“Well now, don’t go soft on me,” John leaned away, speaking mainly to himself, but Paul had already dropped his rifle to the knees of a healthy pine and waded through the undergrowth, ballet blush frosted in azaleas high at his cheeks but resolutely determined to be unburdened by it.

“Hold it like you would,” Paul commanded, close proximity a prayer. John could count the boy’s freckles like stars.

“Ask nicely, and maybe I will,” John taunted, shifting his weight back in lax contrapposto.

Paul’s delusion shot back to John, eyelashes soft against his cheeks. “Please,” Paul quipped airily, impatient in his pursuit of patience, clear guilt beading at his edges.

And so, John would hold his rifle semi-correctly, awkwardly grabbing the neck of the instrument in blind pursuit, glancing across the hilt of the structure into a kaleidoscope of blurry dyes, glasses trapped in his front pocket, mocking obduracy.

John could hear the timid rush of Paul’s breathing, the brush of skin as delicate as spring in October, fingers falling against John’s to reposition them, more firmly at the trigger, easier at the throat. They felt familiar new, discovery of beauty outside of what he thought beauty was supposed to be. Paul touched in torrents of unsure and damn confident, leaving trails of galaxies in his wake that froze John concrete in his bones. The flesh of warm made John dizzy, drunk on too much of too little.

“Ok, give her a go,” Paul stood aside, a clever dim green.

And John hesitated. He squinted gracelessly into nothing and pretended that he could see the fruits of the earth through his empty sockets. Index finger let on the trigger, the drawback magnificent, shot punishing the air and bullet biting into the abdomen of a maple, the frantic rush of birds flowing from the canopy in streams of power.

Paul was adamant, observant, a mosaic of Helios’ chariot across the sky, captivated like John was made of firecrackers, “Can you even see anythin'?” He broke in.

“Oh, God Paulie, I can see Christ the Savior himself, wearin’ a crown of thorns an' robes of white—,” John rolled dryly, slipping his hold on the gun, humor slapping the crisp air in sharp clasps of a whip; Paul crossed over and strung off, “Funny.” The statement stung raw, bold disinterest, but a smile played at his margins, blooms of May across the vale, colors of pastel authenticity. When Paul’s lips curled so simply, fringes of fraternity a blush of day tormenting dusk, John could feel a pulse ripping through his fingers, under the pads of his prints and to his toes rooted in rolls of scrunched sock. He gripped the weapon tighter and tried not to remember the box, letting his guard down, losing his armor.

“Put 'em on,” Paul told. He was talking about the glasses, of which John had no intention to procure. If John didn’t like some of the things Paul had already done, that would be it—the _commands_. He eyed Paul, haughty authority idle on his own face.

“Bleedin' Mary…” John directed lazily. A blade of irritability struck at his cords, nude pessimism. He folded his arms, pressing out his chest, a provocation, an ‘oh, but I _insist_ ’ in his body language. Burden flowed once more, stubborn hickory the cool press of the ground, looming above like pine, stressed on pressing the other man’s buttons, disobedient refusal and raw avoidable insistence.

But, Paul let the structure dissipate with the river. “Daft lad, Lennon, I don’t care what you look like,” A giggle curled in his throat like Paul had suddenly forgotten who he was exchanging discourse with, and it reflected back to paintings of ostentatious indulgence passing in the halls, royal blue curtains caressing the rafters, high ceilings with cream and gold pronunciations. Crinkled tissue paper, Tuscan sun, Paul reflected starlight; he was something to witness in that moment. Boots rooted in mud, wind tousled hair, peppermint pinked cheeks, he stood so close to John, so near that John could study his face, the shape of his eyebrows, the lift of his chin, lace skin and lavish lips, juniper absorbed-eyes, celestial nose, all unorthodoxly masculine.

That small comment messed it bad. John couldn’t grasp back his implacability, anger ignored at the base of his neck, unobserved like a snotty child. He reminded himself Paul could’ve sauced a fight back at John, but chose the lightness of acceptance instead, and John reviled himself for it.

John was drowning. He felt the Aegean swirl around him like sirens and drag him under.

Fate fluttered orchid and plum, and he remembered the box, fingers escaping to his pocket without northern permission. “I got you somethin’,” John deadpanned, voice a stretch, not his own, an impersonator doing a dirty awful job.

 

Mimi had approached John that morning, stalking prey and aiming for the throat, “John, as the initial party, it is expected of you to have a gift of courtship to present at the next meeting.” John chested up against the idea, her tapioca demand, temper crimson dominance until ineffectuality rung and John accepted indifference. A gift really had seemed the right thing to do, albeit rather pink and puffed, a cord in the wrong direction of what John Lennon presented John Lennon as. Giving a courtship gift to another bloke? Laughable. Crooked. Bleeding wrong. But, John was trying not to think about that, now wasn’t he?

A paved road was set down, lit with lamps, and painted with lines of radiant white for John to set off on; the simple request was, “John, please don’t make a fuss of this—just go down to Asprey’s and pick up something handsome and non-offensive.”

He fussed between “wanker” and “whore” for the engraving, leaning towards the former, as it had more character and body as an insult, according to John, but ended up going with just “Paul” as that’s what he had planned for, a folded fragment of notepaper crackling in John’s pocket, iron leather against his thigh, the sketch of a bracelet of silver chain connecting a thin bar plate and a name that haunted his thoughts and whistled to the forefront. He’d contemplated “forgetting” the piece back at Buckingham, accidentally dropping it out of his pocket in the wilderness, creating nonsense and building it a body, but John Lennon deep down was a good, good boy, the bastard, and brought it along to spectate the disaster.

 

Metal and cool, concealed by a fine ruby box in the pocket of his wool overcoat, rested the bracelet.

“A prezzie?” Paul was coming off his high, positively _beaming_.

Dullness poured off John in waves, setting his rifle down against the soft and unbuttoning the pocket, revealing the little square, hidden under the fluted shell of his folded grasp.

“Put it all fancy in a box just for me?” And Paul was _smiling,_ a radiance that perfumed the air with rum and violet nail lacquer. This Paul was so different from the Cavern; he thrived as John was at equal.

John handed the little case over, passing ciggies behind the dark influence of the bar back in the dead of the biting, dodgy night, and Paul cracked the lid, clouds smothering his light instantaneously as he observed what was inside with wariness. He looked to John for an explanation, doe eyes wide with loss, but John had none, really he wished he did, because even he didn’t know why he followed through with orders this time, trapped on an island of disillusionment that thawed in sloughs of hot worry. Alarmed copper refined Paul’s features, glancing back at the silver object, taking it gingerly in his fingers, a wounded wing, metal pressing to skin, white at the hold.

_Do you like it?_

John wanted to tell Paul about the hours of flagged exasperation sketching a design out in charcoal and pencil and paint, the crumpled parchment on the floor of his studio, the trip to the jeweler that morning and the way the surface of the metal glinted under the lights. Yet silence whispered reservation to insecurities and John felt hot angry embarrassment rise up to the sea and kiss its cliffs. Blank steel absorbed the forest, abnegation and misunderstanding towered over them, altitude a dense gesture. Paul’s unreadable silence was concentrated white-walled danger, and John tasted its threatening menace descending on him; he’d opened his world a beat for Paul to chance into and Paul decided he didn’t want it. White stags of fury danced in John’s field, elegant disasters, and Paul stood at the center, raindrops and fairy lights dancing in his eyes, wonderfully oblivious of all that swarmed round him, all that he had done.

Feeling crowded out, John took a defiant leave, sauntering close to Paul as he passed, but shoulders not touching, the younger pegged on the nonchalant sway of the metal betwixt his fingertips, a lulled observation, too much so to watch John go. John experienced that familiar rush of madness, curling smoke in his throat, chanting threats and burning his eyes, as he stormed back up the hill through sopping, trodden leafs, feeling close to them in a mangled sort of way he didn’t want to talk about, letting the fog surround and comfort. Walking right off was an elopement; he could escape his mind from this exile.

Isolation bobbed on the horizon, irrationality his fuel and suddenly he despised the warmth in his face and the weight in his stomach, the mist in the air and the cold seeping through wool, the way he had to put his glasses on to find his way back and the inquiring eyes of the hunting party as John returned all too early because once again, as night turns to day and winter shifts to spring, John hated Paul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was ok! (p.s. my favorite part to write in this chapter was Paul's lil giggle). For reference for ppl who don't know, The Bracelet™ that John gives Paul is a real thing, but there's speculation as to whether or not Paul got the bracelet from John or someone else.


	8. Here, There, and Everywhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I JUST DID A BIT OF RESEARCH AND FUN FACT THE NINTH OF OCTOBER IN 1963 WAS ACTUALLY A WEDNESDAY I DID NOT INTEND FOR THIS TO HAPPEN BUT IT DID HOLY HELL THAT MEANS MY WHOLE STORY IS ACCURATELY LINED UP HAHA WHAT (you'll see what I mean after you read like the first line lol). Also, I think it’d be good to mention there are a few parts where John makes remarks about Paul from his POV that might make Paul appear weaker or possibly a possession (depends on how you read it tbh), but that’s just John expressing that he doesn’t want to share Paul with anyone else and is sort of downgrading Paul in a sense so he has a reason to interact with Paul to “pull” him back in and shove others away. I mean it’s a minor detail but it might throw people off. A quick FYI, this chapter starts out with John's POV and ends with a super confused Paul POV (also quick blurb about Paul's little bit at the end, I purposefully made it very short and very vague because NEXT CHAPTER is a big Paul chapter and will go in hella deep with his feelings and whatnot, basically Paul's POV in this chapter is just like a little appetizer). Enjoy!!! (Also thank you all for reading!! And all the awesome feedback!! You guys rock!!)

John was well aware of what Wednesday was, like midnight’s foresight of the lost souls seeking morning.

Each year on the ninth of October, John’s lovely, endearing, and suffocating Aunt Mimi arranged for a grandiose ball to be held at Buckingham Palace in honor of John’s birthday, a guarantee of many guests of high status and boring conversations to arrive in droves of obedient rams to harass the birthday boy about plans of state and visions for the future; annually, like clockwork, John threatened Mimi he’d run away, he’d disgrace his whole lineage if need be, to get out of that _heinous_ , pomp and suit ceremony. The only waxen glint of hope was the sour embrace of the alcohol and the glistening, engorged pink roast pig—the rest of the night was a horrific bust.

John was reveling in the nostalgic sigh of the wind through the leaves in the gardens, the lingering ache of summer green fading to a broad-shouldered melancholy, sipping at his tea, lukewarm long ago, when the call came, a nuisance of a sedentary, blithe lifestyle. It was around noon on Tuesday. Idle and careful was that day, the easeful cycle of a nineteenth century duchess, enjoying the flowry bouts of adolescence and her riotous chocolate decadent desires. John had fallen to a rhythm as of daybreak, to be left in his self-imposed solitary confinement and lay his mind to rest.

One of the penny skirted maids, Jane, shouted in from a higher balcony like gunshots through the drywall, windows thrust open, a scene from a teasy French film, white sheer curtains embracing flight, figure against the powder marble embellishing, “Your Majesty, there’s a gentleman on the phone.” Cerulean swimming pools, she plunged the mental image and forced John to the present, saved him when he prayed to drown, to duties and to the phone call held on the line, which irritated him to no end. He had requested privacy and she had given him obligation.

Now John Lennon was an intelligent lad. If he did not want a particular item, he would refuse it cunningly, pave an entire ocean of avoidance around it and sail across it like Magellan, a crusader, chrysanthemums and dreamy circumvention; the best alternative christened clear as lime and a split bottom lip to him: “Hang up,” John reasoned flatly, not bothering to turn to address, squinting into glorified creation, a leg folded over the other leisurely. He flipped a page of the day’s paper, already scanned to imitate interest, not acting it too fiercely, assuming Rod or Stu or Pete conducted the phone and wouldn’t be worth the trip inside anyroad. A warmth settled at his sternum, impervious, irreversible youth; he was as free in this moment as he’d ever be.

“It sounds urgent, Your Majesty,” Jane twitted. Her presumptuous nature vexed him continually. He could picture her round, concerned face, a hairclip and a daisy delicate; fingers a lamb’s touch at the sill.

The Lord’s voice echoed down to John in a saintly spirit, a choir of conscience and milk and honey judgment: “Probably isn’t,” John reeled, still facing out into the weeping wilderness. Cotton hesitation absorbed the sky, stroke of a guitar gritting across the Heavens’ ceilings.

“He might’ve mentioned he was a Duke possibly, Your Majesty,” Jane continued and John’s mood flared, hitched irascible, cinder rouge and gritted teeth, the muscles at his shoulders strung and tightening. He could feel the bass line of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” cleaving in his tendons, the build up insurmountable.

John pierced his glare to the left, “Quite a few of those out there, yes,” chewing on the inside thick of his cheek, and that seemed to shut her up.

The tides of the sea distorted that it was Paul at the phone; he knew it to be true deep in his thoughts, and hissed spite and divine that he wouldn’t take the call, didn’t want to talk to the prick. The hunting trip had punctured a shock in John’s pride, a wound struck in the soaked linen hung out to dry, and he’d spent the past four days in foul temperament, waiting out the rain, wellies a pathetic mess to the onslaught of Paul, or lack thereof to be more right. Paul was runs in tights; John spurned the very thought of hearing his voice humming like an opera in his sphere. His Majesty refused all guests aside from mandatory council meetings—there were several along the way—in which he requested the arrangement take place in his royal chamber as he sat in bed and sulked, rosemary weighed down by snow, or a band practice, clipping incorrect, clunky electric notes, wilting sleeves rolled to the crooks of his elbows and his voice sounding like two trash cans being banged together to scare away a stray cat. John was particular sharp and livid of that exact moment that Paul snubbed him and opted for a bloated non-use of communication to communicate how he felt about “The Gift,” leaving John, in his imperial and majestic honor, indisposed of emotion and regular life, an abhorred verity in itself. Many a maid had asked after John’s health, _“Is His Majesty feeling under the weather?” “Would His Majesty prefer some fresh air to the study?” “His Majesty has been holed up for days!”_ To which John was most displeased with the emotion and that his ill humor was apparent to those around him.

So as Jane teetered out from her balcony, an ineffective Juliet, convincing John to come to the phone and answer the kind, respectable gentleman, John took his advantage and resolved to remain, as he felt somewhat of a fool in his own right, unpredictability a fear.

He’d have enough of the notion of Paul by the end of the afternoon, as a mutual suit fitting had been scheduled by none other than Brian Epstein, the sod, for similar vestments to be worn to the event the following. John spent twenty minutes arguing for his personal time back, indignant frustration tore and mauled at the rafters, for squandered boyhood, but Eppy would not hear the prince’s statements and beat back tantrums with good, English sense.

 _“You could learn a lot about somebody by their suit, John,” Eppy gingered familiarly as John blazed deliberately from the davenport by the window. To John, Brian was speaking in parched banalities, sounding too much like Mimi on a record, Saturday night and rattling off blues to a shoebox family. “Aye; the twat prefers **brass** to **silver** buttons? How silly of me, you’re right!” John huffed,_ _looked at him, raw and taut, disciplined by petulance. The fire tingled and sifted in the fireplace. It was edging on nine PM on Sunday. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. You’re just being stubborn.” Brian was folding meringue tablecloths, wearing those queerish white gloves with the pleats at the knuckle mounds that John used to tease about, but not anymore. “Oh, go on. Brian knows best, Brian knows best,” John waved him on sardonically and peered off into the black window, like he could see everything as well as everybody else, to prove to himself he could. Brian paused to the world at a crease, patting it down with love, “I’ll only say it once, but if you stopped hating things before you got to try them, then maybe you’d enjoy more than you do now.” John raised his uninspired gaze to the Master of the House, irritability his cloak. “And that goes with Paul too,” Brian chipped and winked and John could’ve hit him, slapped him to Christmas._

John flipped through a pile of skewed, splintered sketches on the table, unrecognizable faces in the crowd, listening faintly to Jane’s bubbled and perfumed voice carried along with the breeze through the open window, now directed to the “gentleman” on the phone, explaining that His Majesty was unable to answer the call at the moment, as convincing as a popsicle stick in eyeliner. Senseless, witless thing. The drawings were stubbed, stunted ideas of yet another present for Paul (because the first one had been a _smashing_ success), overgrown drifts clipped too far back to be decipherable as anything really, ironically enough, as it was an English custom to provide _two_ gifts of courtship before the proposal, which was a disgusting and daunting battle in itself.

He’d run out of opinions at satin and lace lingerie, which Mimi most precisely rejected as soon as it left her nephew’s lips. Yet, he felt the pressure of the committee and petty internal compulsions, so the morning was worthless in bothered procrastination and minute to show. John was chewing hangnails and a short temper, sitting at his little iron table in the gardens, set to cover Pompeii in ash and devastation. He blotted out another draft of a ring that he couldn’t bring himself to seriously consider, clapped his pencil down in proclamation, and rose from his seat abruptly; much of what was John was abrupt. Detestation fizzled in his skin as he spoke, “I’ll take it in the drawing room,” could practically feel Jane’s sunny cheerful and internal applause as he took leave and stalked inside, against his own promises, of which there’d been a lot of in recent weeks since the commonwealth decided to interfere with the life of John Lennon and steered him anew to that of Paul McCartney. _I’ll just tell him to fuck right off and hang up. Simple._

John entered through the threshold out of the air and into propriety to the obedience and bows of _“Your Highness,”_ a beeline to the phone on the side table, and lifted it from its ceramic basin to his ear, curling the cord round his little finger like a quilty, tarty bird, and listened for Jane’s click on the other side; Paul had begun to form his name, raspberry and lupine through the echo in a question raised, when John shot a “ _Fuck you_ ,” through the line, panther cold, reckless abandon in the red.

Paul waited in the sobriety of a lamb. Moments passed. John could feel his heartbeat in his thinking, a plea that John was still alive, still breathing, though he couldn’t register a damn thing but his blind rage.

“You’re angry.” It was a statement of fact. There was nothing timid or restrained in the way Paul spoke, which staggered at John immensely. Paul talked into the speaker in complete self-knowledge, contained and composed as a black Cadillac. Something melted and welded in John’s vision, something like recognition, something like appreciation, something like _desire,_ which preached treason and felony. John sought to wield a fist into the wallpaper, losing a lip on himself as Paul sunk into the receiver, heat spreading in clothes of honey. Just Paul. Just Paul. Just _Paul._

John didn’t take that same courtesy to wait for the other, drunk in ferocity as a lion. The sea swelled in his lungs and proclaimed that energy of Ares, “No, I’m _peachy_ , Paul, right on pleased.” He had found a fountain pen in a side drawer and was now waving and swording it about in his submissive hand as he spoke, conducting invisible armies to war, body leaned against a table. The heavy weight of his own displeasure on his face gave him incentive, though it sickened him too.

Once more, as in the bridge of a musical piece, Paul ceased at the other end. Any breathing was a blank canvas, inaudible and anticipated elegance, and John lingered for Paul to begin evangelizing to explain why he assumed John was angry, but he let it be. It wasn’t that Paul didn’t care, for a glimpse of tone exposed the mystery, blankets of robin blue in cashmere slips, Paul in blackberry hems of organic sympathy.

And Paul was some kind of surprise he was, shocking electricity into John’s passion.

“D’you wanna go somewhere?”

Paul’s voice dripped through the cradle of the phone like the low melody of a cello.  
John was reluctant for several long, drained beats, twisted and stunned still. His teeth met the air with callous silence.

“Hang out, I mean,” Paul knit, swirling ignorant innocence, glittering rose petals in waters of Japanese blue.

The older was durable in his school of thought after he’d recovered from the charge in his eardrums like a smoke explosion, resistant to Paul and his lure, his provocative charm beguiling even the telephone itself, remembering what John Lennon was about, creative aloof, “Hard pass.” His defiance stung the meadow of the drawing room. He could feel a hurt flinch from Kensington Palace and sacrificed an ox in triumphant ecstasy.

It was awkward unmoving yet once more. Buckingham Palace drew and expanded with the smooth drifts of the wind through the timbers.

“Just for an hour before the fitting—,“ Paul explained in honesty, but John slipped in to fold the sentence shut with his own words in shreds of advent purple, “Who put you up to this? Brian?” He felt tendrils of doubt, white wine and grins, presumed it was another stupid scheduled meeting through puppet Paul to draw the two together, and it petrified him, salt in a gash he’d assumed had healed with the distance.

“Just me,” and Paul didn’t even sound _defensive_ , tailored wide-eyed paper trails. The words were tanged mandarin and John was fuming that they drew him nearer to the phone, not further away so.

He was close to hanging up, to better himself, arm vibrating in the air at the calm of the adrenaline.

“Please,” It wasn’t a wet plea. It sent John round the bend. Listening to Paul talk sweets into the phone was death on a Sunday, rebirth by Wednesday, and new life in Friday night.

And John hated himself. He was becoming soft slowly at the margins, as a paper burns and curls to darkness in the flames. He hated Paul too. “One hour. Record store in uptown. Then piss off.” John said like an injury and hung up.

 

***

 

Paul was waiting outside the record store, hands in the pockets of his drainies, head cocked in a graceful jawline to read a poster on the exterior of the sagging brick building, Elvis cool. John spotted him from down the sidewalk, could recognize his slipped form against the coriander structure like a lost child, a non-confrontational notion. Beneath his jacket, he wore a gray jumper with a soft neckline, though he looked cold, stiff oaken and tall, compressed in on himself. John, in all his fluent finery, wore a black-tee shirt, worn down in its threads, thin cotton touch in fields of old, and his regular stone-hint leathers. Heeled boots ground gravel and Paul shifted towards John, visage heightened, eyes widened, nodding a labeled greeting, safely neutral, as the older stepped from the curb. He studied Paul, just as he’d done in the forest, engulfed in the nature, hypnotized in the mist, and forced himself that he didn’t feel anything, that there was no anticipation beneath the coal and granite.

John didn’t respond to Paul’s movement, a tied bow of maleficence, a cut lip and a popped collar, just walked past him tersely and into the record store, Paul succeeding absently, frost in the air and a pinked, runny nose.

The door jingled at a bell, exposure grinding at John’s jaw that he could do without, shoes scuffing against carpeting over to a box of The Shirelles near the left side, sifting through them immediately as though he were an adamant fan and attempted to prove the truth to the shop in his example.

John stuffed his view down, cornered it in, wished that he wouldn’t glance up, but he could track Paul’s movement on a dime, feeling it in his own limbs, the younger man strolling leisurely over to the typical, to Elvis and Chuck Berry, propped up and displayed right at the front. John could’ve scoffed at his predictability, languid arrogance a rush of tap.

He flipped one flap of the record, skimming the names all the way down, the scattered print, brooding lethally in his own anger; he counted the seconds, constellations of his failures, before he strung his gaze back to Paul, quiet and standoffish, who was smiling softly to himself, exposed wildflowers in the rogue mull, thumbing through pleasantly, as if he’d looked forward to the adventure the whole of the morning and relished in the lingering moments housed under the dingy, clotted roof of the record store. The light through the center window doused his profile in delicacy, silhouettes of cider eyes and sable hair in the gold; he was gorgeous and John was absorbed in his reality. Paul’s touch was gentle against the covers, handling the vinyl like you were _meant_ to handle vinyl, engrossed in the beauty of the art.

John was practically crushing The Shirelles under the thick of his palms, Beverly and Doris and Shirley and Addie, prints soiling the silken protection. In measurement, he shifted over to the next bin and sieved through those too, not fully present to what he was picking up and throwing back, denim envy submerging the village as a blonde-headed bird floated over to Paul, planting herself before of a pile of Jerry Lee Lewis, at an altar to confess her sins, and plucking one from the top. She moved in choppy stripes of self-conscious, messing about with her hair, grooming a doll out of brainless habit, blinking at the phrases on the record like an illiterate. Not that John put on his glasses to see better. He just couldn’t read the last track on the sleeve was all.

He could feel oil separating from water and the tick of his blood in the heat.

She was a dotty petite thing, an Alice band in her hair the shade of vomit, thought John, brown harmonic eyes and these corny freckles all over her nose. Paul probably thought her rather cute, a real catch. But John was coded deadly effervescence, even as the toad turned to speak to Paul, unsuspecting wonderful Paul, pointing out something in the title and giggling like an idiot, shapely eyebrows raised in foaming hilarity, shaking at her slender shoulders. Paul, _John’s_ Paul, made some low remark, lips a slice of a tame smirk from the angle John was observing, like a kiddy at the zoo, and the poppy was twittering once more, placing a calculated paw on Paul’s shoulder as she snorted, yellow rubber and a shoddy stitch. John pelted to the depths of hell, writing epics of death and war and murder. The beast even had the gall to introduce herself (Margaret or something. Not that John was eavesdropping, because he fucking wasn’t) and flirt alongside Paul like some kind of harlot. Bloody children. Didn’t they know what they were doing was _obscene_?

John wasn’t jealous. He easily didn’t want Paul to hang about the wrong crowd of promiscuous gypsies. What would his father think? Her skirt was above her wobbly little misshapen knees anyroad, a telltale sign of a slut, so John slung his record back into the box and without taking his glare off the couple, circled round to the front, folding off his glasses and covering them in his pocket, black leather and auburn hair. John was rock and roll and red in that moment, something heavy in the way he looked at Paul, but he addressed the young lady first, shanty in his voice to mimic Mimi’s and that of an employee of the record store, folding his hands properly in front of him as he bent down slightly at the waist to hide his emerald-green-scaled fury beneath, “I’m sorry, Miss, but it seems the item you’ve selected has been put on hold by _another_ buyer. I’ll have to ask you to pick a different one.” He was the epitome of politeness waiting to snap. Paul spectated in amusement, rolling his eyes, a slim simper at his lips, not that that fueled John in the slightest. The girl depicted dramatic irony exquisitely, a ballet of obliviousness.

“Oh, that’s fine! I don’t really like this record much anyway,” she gushed towards Paul, strawberry embarrassment, as she put the record back in the pile. John could’ve slapped the daft monster, batted her like a fly ball. He registered she was wearing one of those hideous checkerboard dresses, belled out towards her tapering thighs, like a bowling pin with her bob. Oh, she had to go.

And John was losing it, dropping it off, dry mal humor. “Wasn’t talkin’ ‘bout the record, ya clot,” his voice stunted back to insolent normal, expression slack to chaotic, crisp indifference. He squinted his eyes and aimed.

Teacakes and a peaceful afternoon, the girl seemed absolutely taken aback, “Pardon me?” She pawned, confused in a whirl of snowflakes that John could be the sun. No connection was made that John was, in fact, referring to the living, breathing Paul.

John flânered through the gorgeous London day now that he had the upper, “It’s rude to steal other people’s things innit, Paulie?” He looked to Paul then, suddenly an interactive production, who was glazed with a magnificent sterling enjoyment, renewed with the spirit of the younger, taken with his mannerisms, still holding that bloody Chuck Berry sleeve, before he turned back to the bird, “How’d ya like it if I took yer purse—ugly thing though, I’d never go for it—but, how’d ya feel if I took it off ya, huh?” John could hear the quiet snip of Paul’s snort to his left, charging his ego. He mocked himself to remain stolid in his pursuits.

The poor lass gaped up to John, right into his pitch, boundless eyes that said _I’m gonna cut you down_ and grinning like Lucifer had taught him to _,_ mouth quivering, petrified at John in Full Swing, curt curls practically wilting under his sheer force. And likewise, John peeped into her own apricot clear ones, like a row of see-through lace windows, a house of cards, finespun worry tracing her features like calligraphy.

Dainty, delicate sally stammered and blushed a trepid, tremored excuse, retreating off to the exit in the trilling chorus of a protective John, “Ta then! Do stop by again soon!” fake smile fading from his mouth as he turned back to Paul who wore the ebullience of the stars, respect or an item akin to it teetering in his eyes. John observed him, china doll skin, cordovan hair, and huffed indifference, though he felt so much more, as he turned his shoulder and picked up the record the girl had abandoned, train of satisfaction steaming down his tracks.

John couldn’t concentrate on the sentences he attempted to feed into his brain, because holy fuck Paul was there, tight to John that their arms touched through leather and wool, thunder across the Sahara, bringing John to life in the dawn. The dialogue of skin against paper covers lingered in the atmosphere for several feigned minutes. A clinky Roy Orbison song played dazedly on the record at the cash register up front, far away, a haunted moaning echo. John was cracking, currant and consort black.

Tuesday rested in flawless alignment, slips of pale crepe and heather fawn, as Paul and John remained by the other’s side, so new in their recognition of the other, craving to view the other more plainly, more fully than what they had misperceived.

“Was that necessary?” Paul spoke into the meditation of the shop, bemused, head leaning towards John’s like he held a secret in his heart that only John could hear, that the world wasn’t prepared to reconcile.

“Could’ve clocked her an’ it would’ve been necessary,” was John’s dirty reply, coarse in his mouth, and Paul just shook his head, brandishing a sly smile, breathing in beige delight that shocked shivers down John’s spine.

And John caught himself, stood outside himself and watched the whole moment over. _Don’t let him drag you in, Johnny, you stupid bastard, he’s got a hold on you._ And John tried to be menacing, he did, but he made a right ass of himself in his counterfeit explosion.

“She wasn’t courtin’ ya properly, I have a right to watch over ya, don’t I?” John snipped, almost resigned, putting the record back, glaring pointedly, a hot collision of fate and determination, and stalking out the front. Paul was in his goddamn head. He was turning him soft and jelly.

Paul jogged to catch up, bursting through the door as it had begun to swing shut, the bell exploding in noise, John knocking on down the street into obscurity, shoulders up, fists shoved in his pocket, ten yards ahead of the younger standing on the footstep of the record shop.

“Admit it; you were jealous,” Paul shouted out to John’s back into the lifeless breeze, cut clean against the gray buildings, that lifeless town a stranger to Paul’s joy, but John didn’t stop walking, though his heart rasped in his chest, begging for attention, that Paul coquetted to his soul. Instead, he entertained estranged attachment and the coins in his pocket, Paul’s vitality moments before and the kiss of chill rushing to his skin. Confrontation drew a mark in the rain and John bowed away its appraisal in slumped disclosure. A march of staccatoed, choppy steps of sprinting filed closer until Paul was in stride with the other, leering up into John’s carefully concealed expression, a little breathless with his excitement, the London skyline breaking on his face, “Admit it.” God, the boy was positively _glowing_ , madness in his eyes, vivacity in his expression. John forced his gaze off into the black chalk street, some mention of childhood and taunting cars with his life a playful nightmare.

“Don’t pick a fight, son, it’s immature,” John drawled, composure on the dunes of petulance. He noticed absently the silver chain bracelet at Paul’s wrist where the cuff slipped back ever so slightly and something crackled and fumed like sin. That throb of longing homesick choked in his windpipe and he almost grasped what all those fools were trying to sing out in their desperate, coaxed melodies of love and want.

“You were!” Paul exclaimed in pliant victory, ballooning hot air filling his “w,” and John smoldered, a storm-tossed sea, though it endeared him nearer despite his synthetic distance. The image of the tattered lily in the record shop had vacated his consciousness, but Paul then returned her to the forefront in molasses disgust.

The g-chord of distraction played, the f-chord of resistance hummed, and the c-chord of suppressed frustration howled, professing all to John, coaxing him to see where his feet stood. And John rejected them each, retaliating in a single finite dying ray of conflict. “Self-centered git. Think I’d be up in arms over Paul McCharmly flirtin’ with some nancy holdin’ a record? Think I’d sick the dogs on ya ‘cause of it? _You could finger ‘er up the duck pond fer all I care_ ,” He sneered tensely the words into his collar to be absorbed and gasped in their malintent.

John slowed to a bench out front of a barbershop, dropping down in a heap, a bouquet of thorns, Paul taking place by his side, irritatingly enough, like a fucking lapdog, following John to the coastline, he would.

Paul leaned in close, the taste lemon and nutmeg, earth in the pale dawn light, a fragrance of losing himself, words hitting John’s ear in folds of hot poison, “I think you’d send the whole bloody battalion after me, Johnny,” Paul sobered sultry thick, a whisper of cinnamon allure, poking a finger into John’s side, leaning in close that John could see the flecks of chartreuse ardent in his iris, the plush of his lips.

And John smiled at that, batty son of Hades he was, cracks in his plates, drizzle through the canopy, words coming out pressured through his thin lips, soft and low like they’d been made of glass, afraid to shatter, “Oi, you’ve got yer head in yer arse, Macca dear.” He shoved at Paul’s shoulder, at the muscles there, touch magnetic that his fingers wanted to linger in fault. He felt a coward, drawing back immediately, not overstaying unwelcome, to pull a fag from his pant pocket and light it, shielding it from the wind, taking an exhausted drag and leaning against the bench back.

John snuck a loose lock to see Paul’s reaction and was not disappointed; he was flushed ears and shy eyes, butterfly lashes, tucking into himself with the novel nickname and wandering away, fluff and warm, the haze of a fire.

And that was the catch then. Leaning into Paul’s splendor and drunk off it, the curls of amicability traced his sides and filled his lungs, cough medicine dense, just as it had in the forest. He had no barriers for himself, so he fell into it, an outline. He felt in his pocket for something, anything, because although Paul definitely deserved the mountains and the moons, John would settle to give him something that came from John, not a jeweler or a craftsman Mimi touched to gentry with her knighting-sword.

“C’mere. Look. I picked out another prezzie for ya,” John shifted against the wood, through the pockets of his leather jacket, producing a rumpled five quid and half a chocolate bar, presenting it into Paul’s connected lined, face-up palm, bizarre and gracelessly. It was light-headed delusion, Italian antiquity. John couldn’t salvage his gaze from the bracelet; he wouldn’t talk about it.

Paul shuffled betwixt the two, the five quid tender in his hold, the bar rotating back and forth in the foil, glancing back to John, vapor and verity, eyes round and big, a bluff in his imprint, “This second one’s rather shite.” A short, gaspy grin struck at his cheeks, genuine and icy, that told John lies, that Paul was enjoying his time in town, was enjoying John and his crap gifts and scaring off townspeople.

“Cryin’ shame; you’ll just have to take what I give ya,” suave-boy-John talked around the ciggy, multitasking absently and disconnected, lifting up his shirt to reveal a record from the shop, Fats Domino, an unpaid treasure, which he flipped around in his hands expertly.

“Wha’ if I don’t want it?” Paul dragged, a right smooth-talking mobster in a Sunday’s best jumper, ignoring the movement of John’s hands to concentrate semi-humorously on his face, like John held the whole damn world in his bleary, half-lidded hazelnut eyes.

John clicked his teeth, reprimanding sinners, leaving lovers, “Law says you gotta keep it.” No such law existed, and John coddled blankly that when he took the throne, he’d make it so; in the present, the company was enough to keep the charade going.

“That’s a right lie,” Paul ticked, mesmerized, shaking his head. Slips of paralyzed merriment wrinkled at the edges of his eyes, wrapping paper folded in affection.

The past was non-existent, playing posh on that bench outside the barber, afternoon sun fighting death, and John resurrected to an eccentric version of himself, John 24/7, John on Stage, John in the Lights of the Lord, “Ain’t you an ungrateful tit! I got it blessed by the bleedin’ Pope Himself,” drizzled in Shakespearean illusions.

“Did’ya now?” Paul frolicked along, batting eyelashes, a fruity display of liberty, the defiance of a new nation across the sea.

“Oh, fer _sure_ ,” John winked sleekly, took a drag from the cooling ciggy, fondness revived. The lyrics of a song never penned into existence unearthed John in that moment, _both of us thinking how good it can be,_ and John fell in lust with them, tangible desire for something more.

“Well, hand over the record then too,” Paul defended, as though incredibly wronged, and John felt the cream esteem starting in his toes and permeating through his legs to pool like pudding in his stomach.

“Oh, yer bold, ain’t you?” John snuck forward onto his forearms resting at his knees, turning his head even sharper to keep Paul in his vision, and, as though to solidify the gallant statement, Paul stole forth to pluck the cigarette from John’s teeth and take a drag from his lush, wet mouth. The lad made no signal that he’d done anything unusual, shedding that it was simply something that mates do, share ciggies, but John couldn’t stop _staring_ , that his mouth had been where Paul’s currently was, distributing the same air, the same steam. It was enchanted loss, tie-dyed hypnotic lunacy.

Paul knocked his side into John’s playfully, reeling to consciousness, “Come on, then.” _Oh, the record._

And John contemplated for a moment whether he should give it over and expose himself a fool, a mind-dizzy pansy, ‘cus that’s what John thought it would look like, and what John imagines is canon law, cardinal sin, unbreakable. “Nah, I think I’ll keep it,” he hid it back in his coat, unchained memory.

“I’ll turn you in,” Paul threatened without menace, lofty play under sea spray, butterscotch and vodka.

And with that John leaned in very close, close enough to wonder, a promise, eyes glossing over Paul’s gorgeous ones reverberating with challenge. He said the words like the real gift, something unforgettable and true beneath its surface, “No one would believe ya,” whispery dangerous.

But, Paul’s eyes went quiet, eggshell stationary, must’ve realized the distance and the connotations, and blinked himself back to reality. And watching Paul’s fervor melt off like candle, John stood back from the bench, feeling sick, indifference his refuge once more as Paul stood too, brushing off his trousers though they weren’t dirty, flicking the ciggy, not even half-smoked, into the street. He nodded, careful and ordinary, as he had done before, in the direction of the tailor a block and a half down on the left, and John felt the blood in his vision, the urge to toss Paul, right there, to knock his goddamn teeth in. He didn’t. The two set off down the pavement, their shadows long-legged apologetic, uncomfortable silence. And perhaps John’s anger never really did leave, even as he understood the peak of Paul in the late afternoon light, for he registered the twitches of it roaring to life at the tips of his fingers, an impending cataclysm in the horizon. And wouldn’t you know, it was the doubt that did it, that Paul might not feel the same, that sent John into strokes of lightening.

 

***

 

Paul subsided within the foliage confusion, missing a clip of conversation somewhere against the grain of John’s brilliant amicability and sudden reticent cloak. The older bent in the corner of the fitting room pouring a drink unsteadily, shrouded, shattering, full in his suit, the one that matched Paul’s who stood to be prodded and measured presently. He observed John’s unsatisfactory sneer, sipping his coke and scotch like he needed it. But, Paul saw John as he wanted to see John, as he’d seen him all afternoon, in golden lights, a gallant hero for his own prohibition, stoic flames licking at his conscience and nuanced correlation. John was fascination, cool condensation on the window thick, and the idea of drawing by to examine and know was lucid and lovely, a warm flush of good grating his insides when he thought about being near to this boy, to being a close of his. He’d experienced the high, appreciated what it was to inhabit John’s enchanted glow, his laugh the warmth of a hearth and charisma an exclusive boycott; Paul was enthralled, positively hooked. In the gray of the heavens, a Renaissance work of prominent and raucous, John fell silent, an oracle of Athens, wood splintered in the vale, and Paul departed on the doorstep; John sipped stoically at his drink in lax disapproval as he did now.

“Stand still, Your Grace,” the tailor reprimanded as Paul bashfully slid his regard. John didn’t look over, hadn’t the last two times either. He still brandished those heeled boots, tucked beneath the ink of the pants, in muted rebellion against Mimi though dissociated from her realm. John was wrinkles in a dress shirt, steam rising from the tea, anxiously corded and deciphering a spot in the rug, demanding answers.

Paul was gentle teasing in the sun, fingers through the grass. “Gonna wear those tomorrow, eh John?” Paul laughed into his words and pointed a direction to John’s feet, legs extended against the landscape.

“Please keep _still_ , Your Grace,” the tailor flooded and John raised his diluted gaze to Paul’s face, as though he’d never known him a day in his life, and in his haze, disregarded the question with taciturnity. He wore darkness like a badge of honor, weary in the evening, untouchable abandonment. Silver disappointment tinted Paul’s ecosystem, so much that he convinced himself he could function, that he didn’t feel what John donated, and passed through the rest of the fitting in defiance, not glancing over to John, nor anybody else for that matter. Weather-washed lilies, unfamiliarity tormented his bravery that he’d done something to offend the other, snow in the headlights anarchy. He recalled the record store, a discordant boy in leathers stealing Paul from outside company, regarded the gift, warm and hued with clandestine sentiment, reveled in the closeness, the warmth of John on a bench, unguarded, streaks of virtue. For all John’s kind and gentle, he frayed from Paul for the bulk of the fitting, the afternoon a visionless void.

Tilled metal braced the skin of his wrist, the bracelet, and Paul held it nigh, couldn’t point out why he did, but yearned for its closeness nonetheless, when John was distance and disarray.

The session ended with a photo of the two young royals, clad in suits of luxury and class against a lead background, frowns of disillusionment painting each expression for different motivations guarded before departing to the changing room, silent silt, a turbid canoe, Paul behind John, wondering what was wrong and hanging stiffly in the air.

Cotton smooth brushing skin and deliberate ignorance resounded in the room. Paul slid his tie loose, done about that much; loathing practically _radiated_ from John’s section and Paul snuck a glance, as he’d done his best to give privacy to avoid question prior, to confirm that John hadn’t lit the place ablaze. Paul’s eyes and whimsy clung to the broad expanse of John’s chest, ivory and almost delicate under the dressing room lights, to the kisses of freckles at his shoulders, like that of a fawn’s spots in spring. His arms slipped into curved muscles and his chest and stomach were rather lean, though not incredibly built, hipbones tracing down to the waistband resting kindly against the flesh there. John’s face was a tidal wave meeting Paul’s gaze and he lashed into what Paul knew towered high since they’d quit the barbershop.

“Oi, think this is some kind of queer show? Think you can look whenever you damn please?” John commenced his grand display, fireworks and all, Independence Day for an Angry Lennon. Mercury danced in his vision, murder and amour and something ignored.

“N-no,” Paul stuttered and he kicked himself on the inside for not _expecting_ this, for assuming John could ever be a mate, could ever let him in. Heat perpetrated between linen and skin, apprehension trembled, and Paul saw the face of God in his fear, his rage, his pure beaten defense.

“I’m not like you, I’m not one of yours, got it?” John was illegible irate, wary in the warning shot, attacking across the canal with all his cordial beauty, an electric soul. _He doesn’t mean it_ , Paul pushed on himself, though he couldn’t fully accept it. Accusations seized fragility and Paul couldn’t comprehend the enmity palpating his demeanor, overseas and foreign.

“And what’s that?” Paul recovered, a black eye and elapsed pandemonium, swallowing something hurt in his throat. The vibrations of what was to come generated in the very soil. Paul could taste it on his lips, luscious cherry-liquor lies. John was wrong, he was damn wrong.

“Need me to spell it out for ya?” John tempered, straightening his core, tightening his fists. John fought quite a bit these days, a striking natural.

And Paul was motionless, quiet with all the resentment he held inside himself.

“Bleedin’ fairy, that’s what you are, a sweet little tart. How many of them have had you then? C’mon speak up,” John shifted forward, advancing, gathering fire.

Injury claimed Paul, strung wool thin, red and orange in the morning hours, seething into John’s eyes, the universe held in his expression as it ripped him apart hitch by seam. He could barely breathe, chest tight with heavy clouds; John was filling the whole room.

“Would mummy be proud to see her precious Paulie on his knees for another boy?” He was _grinning_ , and he was ugly.

He reached out to touch Paul’s cheek, soft and tender, a slide of skin, and Paul shocked away, “Shut yer filthy fuckin’ gob, you don’t know a damn thing.” Sickness shuttered the muscles in his stomach, graphite and carbon, tipping emptiness to the shallow.

“If that’s what ya like, then give us a kiss,” John traced and he was shrouded in obscure, in storm like the first day they met. It was a threat, not a wish.

As Paul observed him, name thrumming at his temples, a savage drumbeat shot a saluted reverence, that the day was a waste, a covered untruth, that John had set him up in falsehood, John alone, until all he could manage was, “Fuck you,” quivering through his lips, weak and real, as John had done that morning, but not at all like him, a cracked sigh of ire that frightened him, grabbing his coat by the door and slamming it on his way out.

He escaped the tears in the gloom the whole way back, wouldn’t let them fall, tearing wisps in the nightless sky because he hated John, wanted not to, tried so hard not to, but John was _mean_ inside, dirty and dangerous, and John wouldn’t let Paul be a part of it. Scuffing back to Kensington, shadows of disappointment and affliction, his heart sung a wordless line with wicked malice, taunting hope, _both of us thinking how good it could be_ , to a moonless heart and a moonless sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!!


	9. John's Starlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who had writer's block for a weeeeek!! (Hint: it was me!) The last part of this chapter was actually what had sparked me to write this fic lol how far we've come... I hope you guys enjoy it!!! ALSO big thank you to everyone who has left comments and kudos like seriously that makes this whole process worth it (esp. when I have to fight through the lack of inspiration to get a chapter down)!!! THANK YOU, FRIENDS and please enjoy!
> 
> p.s. look for all the STAR references in this chapter !!

It was as though he’d been challenged to walk sightlessly into the lion’s den, rash reckless fishnet tights snagged in thorns, and Paul had done it, the sorry fool. Surrounded by satin and silk of white and gold, viscose and cupro at noir and silver, swirling round in armies of wealth and austere, to where Paul stood in his own suit, he was abandoned in the rough. Buckingham Palace was made of lights that night of John’s birthday, glass through chandeliers and cheers, a warm hue coating a lacquered layer, soft on the eyes and skin. Scarlet carpeting danced beneath his feet, the ceilings decorated a classic seduction of antique lace and Versailles gold that spoke to rationality and tradition in truffled, swooning doomsday. It reminded him of John, the whole occasion, the voices and the colors a mystic swirl, madness a remedy.

Merriment claimed the atmosphere, pearls intertwined with ebony locks, painted lips of Cheshire and glimmering sociable eyes. The guests operated from one station—that of wealth and high birth, lineage and connections—many of which Paul had seen more than he’d rather admit publicly, feigned and farce in their conversations and a dirty interior despite a polished outward glow. Paul despised their rouge faces and monetary discuss, felt the passion root under wool like a document to sign. They crowded and expanded, in obedient attendance to celebrate the birth of their savior, it seemed, John Lennon, the Second Coming. The juncture certainly took on that role, tables set for hundreds, china and sterling, high-backed garnet chairs, the whole room lustrous with gilt and crimson. He was mutely aware that somewhere, betwixt the frail and spectator, was John, proud and bold intertwined with the grandeur, and Paul loathed him, words that steeped in the clay and wound him undone in pastures of lilacs; it felt like Saturday and Paul was far away as miserable and rain shone through in the orange of the street through the high-misted windows.

John had hurt something awful, corduroy and crescented in the calm to when the moments ceased. John filled the voids. He’d spoken those words, right into Paul’s eyes he’d done it, which meant something coarse and singed alone in the dark, fragmented disloyalty. Paul had been stung with that jolt of static nuisance, of that irrationality of John that stuck center at his forehead, John being a royal _arse_ , and shoving Paul into the concrete sternum of betrayal. What an incandescence. The reminder fluttered the depths, soaked marigold, an Aries Ram, splintering frustration back to Paul, who needed little of _that_ , and received no time to recover before being thrust back into the older boy’s realm in pre-organized crime.

But before the crucifixion, as Paul had gazed upon John, he had met soft and new, a velvet embrace, gazed and blooming and golden at the edges, whatever terrifying chastised notion that meant. He anticipated the familiarity of John, as though they'd met years ago, knew the tone of his voice and crushed linen texture of it in the air, thrumming in time with his, knew the color of his eyes in the warm wood of a guitar, knew his humor in a way that no one else could, like every word was for Paul, like John wanted all of it for Paul. It was blissful harmony, as snow in spring, some wonderful contrast, John so brash and bold in his sardonic and full brilliance, and Paul the lovely and tactful sweet of living. It was as though John would give his soul to Paul in strokes of deafening real and shrouded endurance and Paul would resound the echo with the beat of his own brandished, freeborn heart.

Paul stood alone amongst the coral domestic, a media of brush-still gowns and soot-tall suits mirroring by, filtering through and without him.

Statesmen and their wives crackled like parchment and Paul waded along the welded sound of worth to a long-boarded table of alcoholic beverages, of which his father professed Paul not take a step near, denying cordial mis-conversation. Posh. That’s what the whole damn company reeked of, the reason why Paul’s father refused George’s accompaniment to the ceremony, the reason why Paul was presently alone in the conceited, sun-bleached tundra.

_“He doesn’t belong there, Paul,” Sir James was adamant. Paul acclaimed reason, falling flat-footed in the frayed real, “Well he’d be comin’ with me, it’s not a question of fittin’ in or whatever you think it is.” And his father was civil, but not equal in his reply, “It is not up for discussion.” Paul knew it was an issue of class, of how George spoke and how the aristocracy would view him, and Paul’s father tried to portray it as protection, that he didn’t want George to be shunned by the good goodies, but Paul could fucking feel that it was selfish self-preservation, gracefully nursing his own reputation, the myopic wanker._

The thin-necked silver glass was an angel, winking sly insincerity from its welded, shimmering valleys. It was easier this way, sick calm with cherry blossom and stun punch, skipping away from conversations to some far off field that neither John nor the whole bloody hemisphere could inter. Alcohol was his Gemini Twins, aware of all that royal blue fault, that fear that everything would collapse with his mistakes, and it was terrifying.

So Paul reached for a drink, put cool coppered sterling to his lips, the clink of his teeth, the height of mountains, John’s words panting pursuals into thick illusions, until Ringo appeared to his side, an archive of peace, sapphire docile eyes.

“Your Grace,” Ringo bowed low, overly so that it fired comical, and Paul hugged him close when he stood upright, despite the propriety of the setting and Paul knowing Ringo barely a month and seeing few of him within it. But, Ringo soared with the familiarity, took Paul in close, sensed his shattered notion, that something below the surface was nautical and mist and couldn’t be evaded at such an occasion of confrontation.

Paul returned to originality and Ringo displayed a Biblical epiphany in streams of love and acceptance, yet there were lines in his witness, that he’d seen the trenches of John, knew its capacity and felt its sauntered flame, Pisces in pieces. Memory trained to the present and irritability returned. John. His existence leapt in the walls and soared through contingency, that they would reunite and Paul would view him anew, drenched in a thunderous and stagnant hate.

As the ballroom took form and the gentility peaked, Ringo remained by Paul in discussion of anything but the usual engagement converse. Ringo spoke of Maureen, fringe and kohl, the grace and elegance of the night, his _girl_ , monsoons for affection, loopy and sappy in his fanged grin. And wasn’t that what it was supposed to _be?_ Heated cheeks and daft stories and affection bubbling up from somewhere warm in your chest that had no abundant end? Love? When all Paul could feel was destruction and disarray, miscommunication rinsed under ruin toeing at the darkness as John watched in sparring silence. And Paul wouldn’t search the crowd for him, couldn’t bear to meet bronze and wine sharp, a longing loneliness in his chest that he once believed in John, that John could’ve worked to be something, and disappeared into the disappointment as a cure.

As the first hour struck in Buckingham Palace, morose worship, a prompt tinkling of antique to glass turned heads to that of the Queen, who dominated the helm, chartered in periwinkle and regulations. Her scrutiny professed command and reserved omnipotence as she announced, practically to every corner of the empire, white gloves a forgotten royalty and attention claimed, “His Highness will now commence the festivities with a waltz, traditionally engaged with that of the Guest of Honor, a role fulfilled tonight by His Grace, the Duke of Cambridge. Now, as many of you all know previously—,” and Mimi had spent off to the races, clad in self-renewal, discussing the history of the English waltz in contrast to the German waltz and the importance of ballroom dance in courtship, but Paul had fastened to stone and brick, a magnificent looming durability, socked Aquarius still, waves of unaware and new aware breaking boards and smashing sculptures. The rise of defiant magnitude shifted like carbon monoxide, settling in the ballroom to kill them all.

“It’s just for formalities an’ all,” Ringo whispered to the grass and blank was Paul’s mind and body, eyes mimicking through the nobles, when the minute struck and Paul discovered John, across the hall, crowded by the company of Stu who leered and held a hand to John’s shoulder in protective, ivy innocence. In his mind, the ceilings shook and tingled with his own bleeding _rage_ , with the blackened swelling presence of _Stu,_ and the cottoned indifference of John, blinking ineffectually through taurine wind. But, Stu’s fingers curled against the charcoal suit, the fabric an imprint beneath a stolid grasp, until Paul could only press jeweled truth betwixt his lips, “I’m not dancin’ with him,” to Ringo; he could hear panic in his voice, the corroded claws of helplessness tilting in and lunging forward in his throat.

Stigmatized torment, Paul recalled the bracelet in some hurried, fleeting way, a chain of silver sincerity, forgotten in a drawer somewhere, slipped off in exhausted inventory, of what John had done, of what Paul had felt, that he _cared_ that much, even for a scattered flick. He'd heard the likes of it before, drunken slurs to mimic rugged idiocy; with a face like his he always thought, _"how could they not?"_ But the bastards tipsy over at dawn never meant a second stir to Paul, just a bit of red in his cheeks to shoulder on into the night, but from John—he'd plastered Paul to the wall, broke him thin clear off of the face of the earth. And Paul expected it nonetheless, didn't he? After that first meeting, the foreshadow, the forethought, Capricorn solid recollection, he should have fucking _known_ it would come forth once more, John’s insecurities bleeding through his armor.

And there stood John, burgundy disassociation, mocking the ceremony grandly, to the chorus of Ringo’s, “It’s just once, it’s just a special reserved thing, Paul, just—,” as Mimi had finished her charade with outrageous elongated applause and sickly vague music beginning to drip quietly in the backdrop, violins and flutes of sweet, a symphony of Paul’s downfall, like the big golden room swirled round him, expanding and echoing away.

Paul could hear John’s steps, leather to strike carpet, the ballroom a muted catastrophe bearing witness to Paul’s demise; eyes wizened by years but no more wise laying a close watch on the two royals as Paul intimidated himself to meet John halfway in the middle of the emptied space. He was bubblegum mechanical, outside of a resentment ill mind, brimming with the quiet, enclosed furious that could send his segments into the stars. It sparkled under the chandeliers, Paul’s gorgeous, full and handsome, most murderous hatred.

John skyscraped a mere step away, the Coliseum, fabric goodbyes, aloof to life, mildly irritated with the whole charade. He was broad and retained in his stance, extraordinarily daunting, squinted eyes and a darkened expression aimed to challenge; this nigh, he could picture Paul perfectly, from hazel to roaring detestation laced at his lips. John was there before him, in breathless circumstance, _John,_ golden sunlight and sweet summer pear John, witty and wonderful John, midnight mad and treacherous ferocity John, cutting edge cruel and a winding destruction John.

Libra balanced the room, chords climbing high to the ceilings.

The older bowed, as was tradition, wintry dense and shadowed, and Paul followed likewise, accepting hesitantly calloused hold of John’s hands, fitting warmly to that of Paul’s, armistice and contentment across the Spanish hills. In timidity the melody commenced, the entrance of a ballet, the birth of a meadow at sunrise, and John stepped cordially into motion, a practiced step to the left, two to the left, and so on, as he lead and Paul followed, biting his lip to hold back profanities at the _ridiculous_ situation. England swirled round Paul in a medley of diamond and arrogance, chest pressed to the heat of John’s so nigh, the pressure a trace of vanilla and jasmine, rose in contact. In between beats of the recital, bobbing lightly across waves of euphoria, an upbeat confession, that the night would be delightful to all, John’s chestnut gaze caught and held, thin lips slightly parted in the moment, expression colliding with candidness.

 _Oh, so you don’t mind holding hands with a **queer**_ , Paul thought snidely, not that he saw himself as that, but his wounded ego desired he make the statement exactly so, averting his gaze, spun in an eruption of direction and dynamics as John’s hand lined to Paul’s back and pressed there in sturdy, stationary alliance. Paul’s breath stuttered, but he disregarded it, articulate hostility edging into his focus. John wasn’t wearing his heeled shoes.

“Yer not half as shite as I thought you’d be,” John muttered, tone an even bland taupe, as conversing in this theatre was generally polite to do, faces intimate in their closeness. His expression paralleled obscurity and an aligned, perfected neutrality, to conceal any real emotion beneath, a prayer in the dark, a curse to the battlefield.

Paul blinked, lost in himself. He watched John’s mouth form the words but registered none of them, disgusted, “Wha?” it came out choppy and cut off, a little louder than he wanted it to.

They streaked across the floor in wicks of flame, like the very wine-colored tapestries that adorned the palace, in shouts of passion and fervor and masked navy elegance.

“Y’dance like a bird,” John shrugged, common sense in a stupor, spinning Paul out to gather him closer than before, refined sugar bleached sheets off a line, hands holding one at his shoulder and the other lower on his back, to the suggestive dip there. The burgundy escaped to Paul’s cheeks with that. How _degrading_ , the man must be mad! Positively loopy! Paul thought to crack his teeth in, take him down in graceless tact in front of the gentry of his country and let the floor rumble with their dissonance, he couldn’t _handle_ the rain against his roof.

Yet, Dandelions swirling delicacy to the breeze, touches of unsure fragility, steps in cadence with the other, John and Paul moved in rhythm beautifully, glittering tulle and frosting, and Paul could sense it as John sped faster, almost quicker than the violins a fragrance to the audience, like he desired more, requested the backbeat of rock, not the orchids of waltz. A last fading movement twisted Paul back into John’s surmounting hold, the circle of his arms, to blare boldly into the older’s gaze, heartbeat forced up his windpipe in frantic, furious refuge, the rise and fall of John’s chest flush to Paul’s, sequins of cashmere to a licorice night, John’s breathing staggered, eyes remote and hard.

Paul couldn’t forgive him, not in front of all these people where nothing was real, scorched in tremendous defiance as he released and the song closed, the pair bowing once more, this time to the crowd, as though they were owed something, before departing to opposite directions, Paul to the hills, John across the sea. Heat gathered to his collar, Ringo’s ebullience ringing in his ears a discord, “Tha’ was brilliant!” Paul gathered energy, a havoc of introverted aftermath, a marauder in the dwindling pale, innuendo contagion he let run in his system, fragrant florid, “I need a goddamn drink,” determined to get so sodding inebriated he couldn’t reconcile his own name.

Paul’s short fuse simpered the duration of the celebration, spent in isolation by the refreshments, as the aurora turned from magnetic chamomile luster to transcend intrinsic infamous flames. In pushing burn past his lips, champagne a conversation evaporated, he protruded a haze of filth into the empty concern for families and things you were supposed to say to people you didn’t give a damn about.

Meanwhile, the man of the occasion, His Royal and Gallant Highness, chivalrous knight of honor and humility, Prince John, floated about the room, powdered renaissance, an air of lured and overt grace, drawing the peasants in to his vivid, dazzling light and unimpressed, disinterested deadpan as listened and unconvinced with a default edged, mocking expression. John was the almighty clockmaker that set the celebration in uncontrollable, careening motion, a Virgo at their lanterns, charm beneath that insincere, sardonic ridicule, any and every doltish comment sparking sarcasm from those thin, lemon lips. Though Mimi discouragingly chided her nephew with a, _“Please, John,”_ periodically, to draw out that role of every placating attempt, John was having his easy way with every nobleman and his wife, budding jazzy blues to their uncultured prophecies. Pastels and baroque bent with John’s speech, insulting a duchess on her wardrobe to the delight of her husband, swimming back and forth to Stu, who was (obscenely) halfway up the skirt of one of the serving maids in the corner, to split laughs like sorbet.

Paul did not share that hum of socializing on that night, felt a cinnamon madness on his tongue as he observed John from behind his chalice, sinking brigades with what shred of rationality he could salvage for the choir.

The chair he sat upon was one of the rouge upholstered, high-backed ones, as standing had become quite the hurdle; Buckingham Palace did the math that night, one drink turning to four, to six, to eight, to woozy and too drunk to care, cranberry bitterness, of which he was most unaccustomed to, the party swirling within and without and around him all at once. Come and attend the annual birthday celebration of the _Prince_ to witness _His Highness_ flirt with the swollen-pocketed lads and lasses of the Land of Hope and Glory as His Grace slides off an antique, Sheraton shield chair before nine PM. What entertainment to behold! Youth in action and taking part in the deteriorating community!

With the time gone by, time an illusion with the alcohol in unison, Paul had seized that pomegranate fury to him in beautiful silence, as he’d learned years ago, ripples in the pond, after the death of his mother; be still, be calm, hold your pain inside yourself so others can’t see it, can’t use it against you. The chandeliers sunk into fog and the room swelled with heat and haughty, the festivities tipping and sinking with the anchor, scratches in the mahogany.

John moved in an abstract, dissolving fog; Paul practically couldn’t even register that the older boy was slipping nearer to him through the waves, body smooth, rolling steps closer, music dull and far, laughs cracked and cooled in forced amusement around them. John was that brash cliff the surf snapped upon, impassive and sizzling hazardous in the air, charged level in magnificence, the gentle planes of his face under the lights, the rigid lines of his nose and mouth, those clouded eyes. He stood at attention, a soldier’s pose, both hands behind his back, staring blankly commissioned into the crowd. Paul was staring, eyes latching onto all that they could absorb, the rough clip of John’s sideboards, a slight triangle of space where his hair parted, thin lips brighter in the wet. And the world spun on even.

Paul caught John’s voice in the middle of something previously unheard, wildfire consciousness, making atypical cordial conversation, trained civility that never shone through the foliage a day in his life, a Leo cascading his prowess, “Too much magical punch, huh? Mal overdoes it on the rum,” and Paul was instantly livid beneath a layer of glistening, remarkable inebriety; that _voice_. He could feel his face scorching as John met his gaze boldly, Venus in his blood. The older boy’s lips were shiny under all those fucking lights, skin even and tinted daffodil and ruby with the mood.

Paul teetered and swayed from his throne but refused words, refused to demand an explanation or an apology that could clear his head, that he could already _hear_ in his head, and eyed John darkly before endeavoring to focus somewhere else, if focusing on any single thing was an option at this point. A violet sadness curled in his chest, in his throat, tucked in between the spaces of his ribs, and it was hard to pull a full intake of breath, John standing so still, words so fresh in his mind, tormenting.

“Never danced with another bloke before, ‘ave you?” John tested, taunting satirizing the air. _And you have?_ John was completely sober and he was _trying_ , but Paul wouldn’t give, a curl at his fingertips, a soon switched glare, woozy declaration. John’s uncharacteristic silence unnerved him, gorges between them.

Daisies bloomed and rain danced to the windows and John’s delayed, self-praised, overzealous awareness of being ignored kicked in, derisive and crude and amused, reaching over to pinch Paul’s cheek to grasp back attention, a smirk to his face in all his patronizing annoyance. It struck Paul in slices, the touch, the warmth, and he snared cruelty in sloughs of cerulean standoffish and hellish damnation beneath gentle, softened dainty eyelashes; his eyes told a different story a far cry from admiration, blacklisted and carnivorous—they held the sorrows of the wistful night skies and echoed like an undiscovered cave in the mild.

“That a boy,” John paired, emitting sparks of delight, genuineness breaking on the beach, renewed passion beneath his cold indifference, but it wasn’t sweet relief as Paul had unconsciously hoped, but that tangy, smoked sneer of self-satisfaction.

What did John know? What had John ever known? Standing there with that giddy, pleased grin plastered on his face like an insincere valentine, a back pew used for sex, and Paul couldn’t bear to be _near_ him. A crack of truth plowed that John didn’t give for all that Paul was worth, could do with any shoddy bunny dressed in a suit and glowering back into him, as long as it was attention, Johnny boy was set to the stables he was. Paul’s fuel was cancerous, and as he previously rooted to the seat with the weight of intoxication, he stood, Paul the Sagittarius, bending in the wind, swaying and teetering on the cliffs, for John to steady him, to latch hold of Paul’s arm and center him upright. He cinched away, opened his mouth to put John in his place, to roar profanities to all of England in an obtrusive show of what Paul McCartney could do with his soft, sweet mouth and his words all twisted up inside him, rung out to dry, but fate was a sadistic whore and Paul could taste the sentence on his tongue as the chime of Mimi’s voice rung through the kingdom and formally _summoned_ “His Highness and His Grace to the throne platform.”

Nothing compared to the scene, the Swiss Alps frozen over, overcast moonlight, Paul’s glaze mulling over the rows and rows back of dolls on a shelf, of all the rich, white faces, the blinding glare of the Holy Ghost, the vociferous, miraculous silence, courtesy all centered on Paul and John. Paul’s lack of focus spiraled worlds away; he regarded that kingdom in his cluttered synthetic elation, the whole of the empire splayed out in the sheets to a martyr, Paul their heavenward hero, Hercules clad in the obsidian cloak of Hades, sleepless around the eyes and his grasp of the tangible null.

What hope, what life, what resilience.

A tremored, bloated noiselessness exhausted the ballroom, ash filling the air; Mimi had ceased her astute rambling and no foundation was laid out to continue, the current occupation at a dead, lost standstill of what was to come. The commonwealth ceased in its monochromatic pursuit, in the blasé lifestyle of post-war flourishing. For as Paul had slung his head over at the shift of society, John had drawn from his pocket the clasped renew of a blue velvet box, shaded indigo with anticipation, satin anxiety hidden from its folds. Something torn pulled in John’s eyes, told that he wouldn’t genuflect for it. He stared at the thing, suspended in the air, like it did not merely exist and that Paul need not receive it. Paul wasn’t fully processing the situation, his position at the front, John and the box, and so Paul took the box in his shaken hold, skin whispering across the smooth, and comprehending exactly what it held within. It was an illusion that Paul could have a choice in the matter, John handing him the box like he wouldn’t deal with it himself, like he’d done with the bracelet, and as Paul’s thumb circled and pressed to the lip of the lid, flipping it open, a ring of silver glinted and grinned back to him, and Paul could only stare, at the cut stone embedded in the wealth, snapping his gaze up to John, who waited in anticipation, piercing velvet worry with something lethal still in his face and in his body, like the almond fear that Paul would say _no._

The box melted through Paul’s fingers, the ring weighing down the oxygen, absorbing all the sound from the place, and trapped in Paul’s body was something angry, fearsome, and wild, petrified of the future, of all that the ring symbolized and promised, sultry hints of stereotypical and destruction inked in blue and Paul, aspen staged. Staged. Staged was all this could be, so Paul would have to say yes, corner him to plead innocent in front of all those horrible people. He looked so hard into John’s eyes for help, terrified and furious, on the verge of tears, thick faint with the chardonnay glow burning still in his stomach. He felt his margins coming undone, breath dissipating as John’s expression remained in its sincerity, searching Paul, pleading _Paul, do something,_ and Paul, the self-proclaimed coward, foreclosed his prison with a scarce nod, mechanic luck, forming a cracked and broken, barely audible _“Yes,”_ with empty lips, to be met with an orchestra of approval from the upper class, to toasts and clapping and roars. He’d consummated his own downfall and in the rebound, Mimi presented another _grand_ gift to the democracy, a week-long Paris trip for John and Paul to embark on _together_ , to further their “connection” and “bond,” a bangin’ prezzie, it seemed to everyone else, but Paul could only disregard it, for what he’d done, for his docile cow acceptance. The ballroom fumed with humidity, vision dotting and blurred.

A garden of moonlight poppies, Cinderella azure, Paul staggered off the stage, the Crab of Cancer, shuffling into the hallway, into the darkness, and out of the noise and parade. Sickness clung like dew, that he’d bargained his soul, as his father commanded, a marionette, a sacrificial virgin. He rested a hand on the cool of the wall, alone in the finality of the night, not a spectator to depict what his sunken formless posture could represent for the nature, for the future of the country or the fertility of young English women or whatever. Isolation was tranquil, forgetful. What it was to be estranged here, disconnected from all that knew him not, immobilized him in thought, sails across the sea. Trickling still in that moment, as the resentment returned, Paul was damp sidewalks under streetlamps in the early morning, the fleece maroon touch of socks to carpeting, the renewed echo of water hitting the basin in the loo, and John was the clap of footsteps in the dim and “What’s gotten _you_ in a tizzy?” sharp and hilt, a tinge of anger in his voice as though embarrassed.

The moment was the rain assaulting Buckingham’s windowpanes.

The moment was the gallop of horses’ hooves to war, to death.

The moment was pure marble pillars holding life together.

The moment was the _“fuck you,”_ crushing from Paul’s lungs.

It was incoherent and mussed, incomprehensible to the ears of men and if Paul weren’t so drunk and so goddamn _mad_ , he might have been able to register that John was asking what was wrong in some kind of twisted, mangled, backwards-fucked-up way.

The older timed his strike, rudely immediate, controlling everything important and kind and searing it with his own tissue paper fire, “Speak up, son, what’d mummy think about yer bloody mumblin’ all the damn time?”

And Paul faintly registered that his mother was dead, gone years ago and no one could save her; John probably didn’t know that, wouldn’t care a bit to know either.

The Taurus Bull took his charge in Paul, veins of stubborn misconstrued misconduct lulling up through anything John may or may not have been thinking about, casting back that which John had used to tear Paul apart, _“Give us a kiss.”_ The words were perfectly minted as if they’d come from a sober man, aimed to remind, to reveal John’s sword in Paul’s skin, that he’d seized him sober and sent him blind drunk; he had John’s attention now, rhyming satisfaction.

Laughter and calamity resonated through the walls and paintings and chambers from the guests, ironically and awkwardly timed. It was the click of John’s jaw, hostile, and John somehow made himself bigger, more intimidating, more _furious_ , so that his head and eyes were angled downwards in a rough, tangled attack to Paul, like he was above him, but he wasn’t—Paul wouldn’t acknowledge that as the truth. For all his titles and status, Paul would not be placed underneath him.

“C’mon, _Johnny_ , this is what you want from me, innit?” Paul shifted forward dizzily, squarely, to stand face to face with the older, with that denim and venom expression, unconcealed, John in Form; John almost appeared as though he wasn’t listening at all, like there was something beneath his surface, far off, out of England and across the universe.

If Paul weren’t so gone, so bleeding sauced, he would’ve hit John, made him focus on the life they’d built, the issues they’d created; John reflected the Scorpio, the compassed, mounting storm.

And yet, for all his boisterous nonsense previously, John was silent, something plainly painted on his face Paul couldn’t pick it out in the satin midnight.

The stillness was consuming; Paul had just wanted John to listen _dammit_ , to comprehend that he was _wrong_ , that he didn’t know Paul one forgone fragment, tipsily jolting forward to grab at John’s suit clumsily as if to shake him, as if to demand the older boy to _listen_ , but John was ready, John was steady, and as Paul had ignited in candid anger, John cut forward through the experienced noir, in witness of a captive uniformity, of an unclaimed opportunity, to crush their mouths together roughly, an eclipse, an avalanche of white explosion.

Paul’s breath hitched, mind blackened with racing senses. He might’ve let out some small noise, a gasp shut short in his throat as he felt the sure press of John’s lips to his, performing poetry, flowers blooming in the coarse touch, sliding warm and control, existence so real and awakening, bleary eyes focusing confusion on John’s eyes squeezed shut, gentle brush of cheek to Paul’s, the proximity electric. He tasted like vanilla and something stinging, like cigarettes tinted betwixt his teeth. It was hot, alluring, calling him forth from the recesses of his seclusion and terror, beckoning him to let go and return. The older boy’s fingers were tangled in the umber tuft of Paul’s locks, securing him there, tangled in the lustre of his suit jacket at his shoulder blades, their two figures locked together. John held him so near, held him like he wouldn’t let go for all Zeus’ planets, and John kissed like John would, demanding and stubborn and will, but beneath that, so much blinding passion to touch the rogue and turn it to affection. Paul felt the teeth graze his bottom lip, slowly, deliberately, shivers raking down his back like the rustling of the October leaves, _losing himself in John, all of him at once_. Because John was smoldering whiskey, spice and sweet, biting tenderly on the plush of Paul’s bottom lip, shattering lightening, taunting him to catch up, that through the obscure intoxication, was reality, Paul’s inaction, Paul’s sidelined fury, loose in his own form, and John’s mouth on his.

For in a misplaced hallway of Buckingham Palace, John was kissing Paul, tongue tracing, intent in intensity, shrouded in darkness, shrouded in secrets.

It was the galaxies burst open and bleeding into Paul’s Heavens, that experience of John, _John_ , drawing him in, sucking on his bottom lip, hunger and desire and overflowing with yearning, better than any bird that had done the same. Staggeringly, breathtakingly so, John _meant it;_ he turned his soul golden in that kiss, preached sermons of multitudes in his embrace, promised a creation of love and fervor in that caress. And Paul was in awe, taken aback, struck because John had built up a façade of brute force and hatred and intolerance and sheathed it down for that instant.

The celadon delicate caress of a thumb to his cheek, affectionate slips of affable appearance, the familiar inclination that none of this was authentic, pulled Paul away, slating the kiss, staggering backwards to hit the wall as John cocked and zoned for a beat, cheeks baskets of strawberry, eyes stilting exotic, expression stuttered startled, before he streaked off in the dark, avoiding that confrontation, that explanation, just as he always did, Paul thought absently.

A spinning preoccupation dominated the hallway, weaved paintings and statues and wall together, made him nauseous, John lingering on his tongue. He sunk down to the floor, slipping through the cracks in the earth, knees tucked, warm and languid. Perplexity drove his soaked brain silly when Paul shut his eyes, let his head press into the wallpaper, delving in and out of the constellations, the dust forming from juniper and lapis that conceives all of us too, because in a flicker of reality, John made his heart beat fast and new, made the stars burst into the night, and Paul didn’t understand that budding, flowering truth sewing silver into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright yeah, so the boys are ENGAGED, but, I'd like to reference, like I mentioned in previous notes, that this is NOT the peak, that it was like super common for arranged marriages to occur when the couple was not in love (or recognizing/confronting it....) and next chapter is in PARIS (our favorite place ever). Thank you so much for all your love, cheers!


	10. Nous Sommes Allés à Paris (Part I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, hey, hey! Yay, a Paris Chapter wooh! o.k. so I had originally wanted to fit the whole Paris week into one chapter (very ambitious I know) but that so didn't work because it was getting way too long and I'm just going to do a part one and a part two. Fun spoiler: Part two, at the end, will have smuttttt :) how fun! Anyway, have this very relevant quote that helped me write this first part:
> 
> "The two spun time and again through the same cycle. As the alpha, John would establish his dominance, and then Paul, like a canny prime minister under a tempestuous king, would gradually assert himself and take charge--until John, often suddenly, struck back."  
> -Joshua Wolf Shenk
> 
> Also this chapter is LONG. And an FYI: the days are John's POV and the night's are Paul's. Enjoy ! ! !

_Seulement un._

 

A private plane departed from London headed Paris south the following morning, John and Paul both aboard, slating by the other, loafing myopia and inexplicable synthetic disinterest, caged tigers shattering the stratosphere, in mutual, static discomfort.

The plane went up and stayed that way, Peter Rabbit bobbing lazily up with the clouds, off with his head.

John was out of his, tracking the journey dully, all of it suede and film from above the patterned muse, scratching soaked-through-thin blotches of art into the morning paper resting at his knee, fabric of his trousers stretching wool and awkward, desperately shunning that which invaded his mood. Engaged. John was happily, incandescently, helplessly, frustratingly _engaged_. Every penny in the Pacific could tell you that, for news traveled fast, but nothing could get little Johnny Boy to wear a shiny silver dolly’s ring to prove it. He was stuck and stubborn, irreplaceably _bad_ ; something underneath jumped white and orange at the opportunity to grace His Grace with visible proof that _Hey! We’re connected,_ to identify that there, in fact, existed out of plain sight some external factor that brought them together and made them an entity. John could _feel_ it and it made him drunk. What was the likelihood that he repressed it, then? Total.

Ebony forest fires, the shade of an orchard, John delayed, flipping to the next page and creasing it through the midsection, soft flesh with delicate assurance.

And what always comes next came next. The kiss. A florid, divided memory, irresistible and indecisive, pure radical torment. Paul’s lips gentle and full, mouth open—desperately open—a gasp a profession, curved glittering touch and fiery allure mixing cement to the tilt of his fingertips, larceny in his soul. Sharp though the moment, Paul was Apollo, the Euphrates and Tigris bearing ardor, a scintillating consciousness obstructed in a ruin and charred hallway where no peace of mind would escape, rays in the Sunday afternoon; from ashes, John was born anew, visions through the blizzard, charged longing. He could’ve resided in that blood and form for eternity, holding Paul a ship bracing the wreckage and sink him complete, fervor leaping in his fibers and every other swell of his chest. This wasn’t kissing some flashy minx with kohl-eyes and painted lips, cooing for _John, John_ , like some indulged schoolboy; this was _Paul_ , who understood the redundancy and holds of John, even if he couldn’t right now. Paul, cardamom and soft sugar stark, understood the complicated inner workings of a John Lennon out of sight, predicted his falling Icarus and lifted him back in flight.

But, what rains really pours.

John knew damn well what he felt, windy reveries, speckled musings, what all the _soft stuff_ meant, how it would’ve appeared to anyone else, John snogging Paul in a back hall, drowning with the need to touch and _feel_ Paul to him, taste his mouth like a summer, while he, John, had only known winter. In the blackness, he saw Paul so decisively, outlines and abstraction, negative space in his passionate fury, alight like a hidden flame blown into sparks. His heart burst for Paul; in that disastrous, blinding moment, John  _needed_ Paul, every challenge from that first coincidence built up and layered in confusion to where his sanity would only be salvaged with indulgence. And swift though the apparition, John had berated himself the whole night rough, denial of fragrant desire, of penetrating emotion to ban the highlands and beat back reason to Plato, rewriting the scene how _John_ knew it fit in accuracy, that he’d described in his mind bleached locks and apologies, Cyn, or the pale petunia lips and pencil plaid skirt of that chambermaid who came for laundry each Monday—not Paul, hazily tipsy, flushed and warm, snipping cloth cutouts in John’s subconscious whispers, a waist to meet and a lust to indulge. He’d sunk red rich with his own, and that was his mistake, wasn’t it? His bastard intention shifting so cold, coffee deep, moons away; Paul had pulled back _mortified_ , chartreuse unspeakable, that John had noted somewhere vacantly far: Paul _rejected him_.

What a revelation that could be. What a news headline. The same kind that John filled in with black and short lines to cover up that stifle, a sunflower sensation, for Paul was estranged violas, tucked into the back corner of the plane beneath layers of wool blankets, numbing, boundless sleep, as the machine roved 30,000 meters up. John was far from it, glancing over every so often, twisting around in his seat to behind, a single socked foot peeking beneath the rivulets of doughy fabric, order playing across his features, uncomfortably situated against the chair, cheek flush against the side. Behind those eyelids of dreams, John pictured nails and ladders, lethal judgment, haughty selfishness, stubborn willful, that John had observed, the faults of a god, the downfall of Odysseus. Paul seated alone at the banquet the night before, glaring out at all but disclosing to no one, constructing an internal burn list of flaws in immediate, unanimous company, a holier-than-thou continence that he couldn’t unfold his deer legs and teeter over to join the bloody conversation, persistent in his absence. God _forbid,_ Paul sacrifice one fucking night to feign enjoyment and pretend, for _John’s_ sake, that he didn’t outright detest life and all its bounty by drowning himself in punch. To the impression of the prince, Paul masqueraded that he’d been taken captive in the crescendo, paraded about like John’s war exploits, and it made John sick with Napoleonic frustration, shortbread drama, because Paul was free to do as Paul pleased, and he fucking _knew it_ , flaunted that much in quenching the kiss, that was apparent.

Embarrassment kissed John’s unsure, reclaimed his anger and dressed it loud, that John had stepped to far, the daft lad he tried to tell himself he wasn’t; John didn’t feel _that way_ about another bloke, John had a definition loitering for his actions this time, but it was swept away in the rain and muted by confrontational, experimental precision. Paul flowing across the surface of the sky, symmetry and galleries, hand spun to John’s, invisible cord of fate, raven suit a piece of John’s own, borne of the same cloth, the same brilliant creation. _We were made for each other, my boy_ , and John disgraced that silence.

Through the partial-fogged window, John viewed a slice of Paris, a muddy gray city from this altitude, couldn’t decipher the grand fuss every debutante and her mum made about la ville d’amour, some satin fantasy cloaked in string lights and secondhand perfume, and it just looked like elephant leather and deceit to John.

Studying the lax cave of his hand, arched against the layered, gossamer newsprint, flakes of pastry, it lacked a ring, as did Paul’s, the silver engagement Paul transfixed his image on in terror, John calling Paul over the continents, to battle, to death, and Paul’s eyes layered on every detail of the life they would have, yelling and thunder, the anguish and delay of dissatisfaction overlapping with bouts each denied the other; Paul witnessed nothing of honorable countenance that could depart from a union, personified in a ring of eternity. No sugar-stained curtains nor head rush of euphoric obsession with life, Paul surveyed a marksman’s result: endless dissonance where affection missed the train, and it _pained_ John, reined him in tightly to the palm for an inexcusable defense; a cashed ruin of John had yearned for the co-existence, for that pasteurized illusion, for rampant, mindful throes of an entity to nearly resembling love it emanated apprehension. John rhymed his pen to the Politics Section, modern art and immersion. They could ruin each other, God in Heaven they could.

Rendering the denser side of noon, the vehicle touched down in France and Paul awoke with a jolt, much to John’s amusement.

He wouldn’t admit they could complete each other, gazing out to all he saw, Paul’s ruffled hair and a cloudy sky.

 

***

 

On arriving at the hotel, a mademoiselle cloaked ivory, all done up with lonely golden lights to call for a lost love from years ago, ebullient and ringing against the Mediterranean, dying sky as night set so boldly in, Paul met John’s defiance in the shape of a single, king-sized mattress at the center of the room. The place was done up with flowers and paintings, a massive structure squared away by guards at each offending exit, as Mimi had surely thought of everything, in case Paul might think to _stab_ her nephew in the wee hours, or some other absurd factor. Though, if Her Majesty had known the events that had taken place in her very own hallway, she might have held the awareness that Paul wanted little to do with John, outright embarrassed with what fusion had assembled in his fibers as John had made musical effervescence and threaded him close under the watchful eyes of the stars. Paul claimed Amboise irritation, that if John dared liberation of any genre over the course of the trip, Paul would unleash, send him sprawling, Maplewood ruthless.

The younger remained determined beside his shield in the fields, wildflowers blooming in the metal, that John wouldn’t see his exposure, his injuries sustained, only to be met, as the unruly abyss flows to the calm of the shore, with faux certainty. But that was a tainted reality, as Paul had come to conclude in a fleeting wisp of insanity, that the cake tiers of refusal hid a mesmerizing, fluid interest, an adoration for John that he couldn’t bear to entertain after John’s behavior.

So, as the afternoon breathed its prayers and John laid eyes upon the appearance of only one bed, Paul could seize the strained irritation, pulled thin as sheer with the tension of travel and proximity, and swirl it around with his fingertips. Paul was putting his suitcase down, a footstep in the comforter’s oasis, when John sneered, “I’m not sleepin’ with ye, if that’s what yer thinkin’, dollface.” He put a handprint on the bed, dipping in with the pressure, thick summer paint.

Paul shrugged evenly, defiantly, that bold obduracy that had forgotten itself as of late; “You can take the tub then.” Paris echoed Paul’s stolid sure. John demanded treason, that he’d seen an illusion that wasn’t sweet contradiction and would simply adhere to his paradoxical demands.

“Oh ho,” John grinned, yellow excitement, almost leaning across the expanse to Paul who observed in sober midnight, “not so fast, princess.” That charged at him, the leggy insults and the exhausted assumptions to billboards of Complaisant Paul, that wasn’t Paul an _ounce_. Sweet, innocent, Paulie Luv had stayed back in London to tend the garden and set the tea. Paul McCartney, His _Grace_ , had landed in Paris this morning, keyed and rotated for equal satisfaction, unnerved towards a raucous, petulant John.

Zebra stripes of disastrous force candidly lured Paul to the dark, that he could send avalanches of attacks, about a lack of class, a lack of character, a kiss in the sky with diamonds, but Paul had rationality, and simply shrugged, “Well, _I’m_ not the self-conscious prick who minds sharin’,” and John was bullets in a belt, but he didn’t press further, just seethed raisin purple to himself, pastel ruby brushed across the bridge of his nose, freckled warm eyes that of a nihilistic dragon’s.

 

***

 

Spoiled by a suffocating measure of royal surveillance denying permission to leave the hotel, Paul dispensed his first evening in Paris by vacating the room, and John—who read in brooding solitude by the retreating glimpse of the window—for the pool on the ground floor.

The swell of chlorine, glinting clear pastel, beckoned him closer, invited him past the concrete ledge, a slut in red, gentle talking him to the edge, giggling, _Paulie, Paulie,_ until he was tangled limbs and a wild mind silenced by perpetual July pristine. _Sous l’eau, le monde est mort._ Weightlessness, losing control, he squinted his eyes through the cotton blur, rosé bright, the naïve youth of a blue sky, batting out blindly into emptiness, blindly as John was—blind to the forests, blind to Paul and that frightening anger that rose up in the younger boy, a paper and string wrapped parcel from His Highness, blind to that vast, intimate unknown that could elevate them both. The entranced lure of love songs and liquid sapphire, encircled by a porcelain fortress, John didn’t penetrate that smooth slip of satin; no, he was thirty floors up, a baroness not to be bothered, and Paul held his air tightly inward until his lungs stuttered and streaked for air, resurfacing and panting off the ledge of la piscine, eyes bleary, gunpowder dark hair mopped to his forehead. The cross-stitched lull of water lapping to the wall peeled lies, chocolate strawberries and truffle cherries, a kiss on the cheek goodbye forever, Paul forgiving John in a well of enduring faith, that John could ever love him fully, painfully, so much that it hurt. But fantasies were for good little boys and Paris was full of its illusions.

For John was Mars, he’d have the war he’d ignited with his words, Paul would make right of that, picture framed water lilies radiating sonnets to the sodden earth floor. He’d presented his impulsive aggression and passionate recklessness to Paul, folded his hands in with the flour, and evaded the consequences when his spontaneity departed from Waterloo; Paul wasn’t content with their current situation, engaged or not, red mittens in snow.

A glass coke from the vending in the lobby, dripping, rolling wet against the marble lobby floor, standing bare-chested in his clinging trunks, Paul returned to the room as the sun bled defeated tangerine through batiste chaste curtains, a red Matisse, where Paul was an abstract touch at the doorknob, towel-drying the moisture from his hair in frenzied throes; John was a touch me promise in his gaze, unfiltered instant, eyes embers behind thick-rimmed glasses, whimsical forbidden memorization as fingers chased paper, running the words across the page in gospel. Paul could paint masterpieces of John’s chestnut focus, the tilt of his head, the wave of his locks against his forehead, the hint of interest to his features; it made something spark at his spine, John as quiet still, reserved not rowdy sarcastic, melting like caramel, before it disappeared into the sea.

The slow drip of cool down his skin, droplets of water lied, that they could be like this, John a statuette of fascination, enamored with Paul’s presence like the first day they never got, desire a reflection of his affection. If only Paul would listen with his ear to the mahogany, break the murmur of intractability pressed to his skin, tight as quilt, that John was breaks in the rocks, not to be understood beneath his energy and life.

 

***

 

Paris night draped across the city like an affair. Limbo weighed the room down, a maple syrup safety net for what would undoubtedly unfold, creased pleats of a sundress wilting after the day. Paul could taste the vibrating rancor of the older boy, shuffling about in tedium, lead steps, sour shots to himself, _“you’d think the bloody **English Monarchy** could afford two goddamn beds…” _ trailing off into a part of the scenery, the ville alive with the craving hearts of an army. It was overplayed, his frustration, though Paul could fully comprehend it; but, they’d been strung together with sterling and tradition, that invisible silken hand, which traveled mysteriously through spheres playing God, and Paul had had just about enough of John’s Hysteria.

No warning, he snapped off the light, the first day of Genesis’ creation at the fingertips of John Winston Lennon, “Top and tail, then?” his voice thick and chalky, whipped smart, a snake charmer. Paul rolled his eyes. At fifty, would they still go top and tail like schoolboys afraid of the shouting, forgetful thunder, but more afraid of their sexuality, ducking the waves to ignore the brunt of the blow, though the water wasn’t as bad as it appeared; the water always lied.

Paul could’ve laughed, could’ve scoffed right in John’s apprehensions—he’d shared a bed with another bloke before, George plenty of times, _he wasn’t asking John to toss him off_ —easily slipping under the linens and turning to face away. A shift in the equator was a shift in the mattress, John gray motion; he didn’t take tail; he faced the other direction, the floral wall hidden in wintry repose. Paul could feel warmth across the bridge, sun catching through the barren, scraggly trees, the drifting pattern of breathing, concentrated versatility of John romanticized in taciturnity.

The full, cobalt soir enveloped them, Paul and John, John and Paul, touch liquid cool, consuming familiarity, like slipping beneath the depths, slowly registered lies as they sunk, each to his own.

 

_Ma vie est nouvelle aujourd’hui._

What was Paris was waking up peach and macaron, the pink and milk of innocence, to Paul’s cheek placated tenderness to the pillow, a blush of serenity, eyelashes long and moonshine on his skin. It was early, dawn of dovetail and glazing cerulean, a glimpse through university windows at a street dampened by snow, the younger boy blissfully absent to the moment, to the momentum of the world spinning on its axis all so John might astonish in his peace. Mist detailed the room, a forgotten confidentiality, an hair ribbon tart in the morning, and life was a still touch, John pinching his greedy breath, compressed into the core of the planet that he might not perturb the riverbed, but spectate in his trance. In his mind, he drew John Lennon a braver man, across the cabins to kiss his nose, wrap Paul in his heat and matte white and absorb all that passion and truth that danced from the boy’s secluded inferno. And John swore he’d never obscure the windows with curtains another evening if it meant light cascading across the ivory of Paul’s skin, drawing cotton candy to the color in his cheeks.

The sun would resurrect, butterscotch reborn across the morning’s dull.

The city would ignite, a candle to the cold, flickering by shuttering blows.

The guards would come, surely, to the door, knock politely fore entering rudely.

But none would know audacious fragility, John Lennon’s brushed fingers across the forehead of Paul McCartney, shifting locks of coach room oak from the younger man’s face, delayed on the contact, centered on the sigh of breath Paul released, before flinching back, recoiling from the mattress, undershirt and boxers, barefoot against hardwood, a criminal, a crime scene, a _murder_. For that foretold, downcast fondness John had tempted and denied and censured with fire had so soon begun to burn.

 

***  

 

Loose threads of twill, echoes of imaginings reaming from the stone walls of churches, from across the sea even, the Queen had executed her stature, that the two young royals, untouchables, untamables, would expend the days beneath a tightly embroidered cathedral tour schedule, taut and sore non-scandal, black sewn edges of white handkerchief, a Friday of crimson and gold bathed in tedium and beaded implacably by pages of guards. The City of Love and John _loathed_ her, vaulted stone ceilings exhaled in rust, a wailing lonesome in the stationary mute.

John tapped his nails, Presley’s “Hound Dog,” slow and deliberate, to the sanded straight wood of a pew, glossy irreversible to fit some carpenter’s wet dream, gaze following Paul, who stood before a statue of the Virgin Mary, penetrating immensely into sorrowed eyes with his own accentuated and burnished gems, into her pain and expanse, like he could relate, propped there in his over-worn, black-buttoned wool overcoat that wouldn’t suit him at all, a set his father probably tossed to him intermediate out the door to remind of place setting, swooping lines of complexity and nature; Paul was stolen art, undeterminable deeds for the orthodoxy. The cut of his jaw summoned shadows in the low lighting sifting through the collaged high windows, narrating stories of nymphs and the sea, of what good came from love and desire, dignity in his lure.

John lost condition of how many churches they’d skipped about that day, schoolgirls in piggy tails waning from their double-dutch, mannerisms bridging on childish as a temper flared and twittered in the trees, wings clipped for purposes unclear. So John squirmed, tourists functioning mechanically in this hell, claimed by his own homogeneous monotony, unrivaled surveillance of Mimi’s coast, that John and Paul play in the churchyard like good sweet lads and make as little fuss as possible as mother read in the kitchen.

Olives across the Athenian grove, the two had interacted so minutely that the day tapered by grain in, grain out, peevishness and ridged edges from John, who took poorly that unaffected poise of Paul, keeping to himself and making eyes with the Virgin like some Sunday-goer with a pencil-pushing day job. Green eyes were lifeless as they slipped to John when engaged, clear dilapidation, unconscious focus, seeing out the other side, nothing but everything on his mind. John couldn’t read a damn spot, hadn’t detected a flutter or kick of the enlightenment since the prominence tapering after the kiss, the astonishment, the perplex, Picasso’s greatest mystery.

Impiety, Dissebeia Paul had evacuated his presence in John’s preoccupation, stupid rock.

Paul had wandered from the nave, a disappearing act doomed never to relinquish, shined leather footsteps tapping dark chocolate pigheadedness to the marble, away away, anew anew. What would John, a child of the flowers, have acquiesced other than shuttle betwixt the columns, the regularity, to seek out another, that one who made his heart press and head sing lyrics unknown to the world, _If I trust in you, oh please, don’t run and hide_ , card out to the chapel, where privacy beckoned, buttercups and pining forget-me-nots. Paul remained picturesquely beneath a high, domed window, a masterpiece of rococo art, light circling him in a sundry halo, crayon exposure. He was flipping through one of those cheesy guidebooks he’d picked up a few stops back, biting pressure at his bottom lip, feigning ignorance of John advancing, fawn in the wood.

“Look at _you,_ ” John cocked his head as he pried from the darkness, face alive, alight with taunt, eyes tracking the flip of pages, “makin’ every other poor sod look like Judas Iscariot.” Paul didn’t shift a muscle, cool uncrossed level, God Himself the master puppeteer. John slung through the ring of light, stood at its edge, unentered, uninvited to the grand hurrah, fondness overriding examination, Paul enchanted by the foreign words flimsy to the print. The Heavens blossomed comprehension, illuminating Paul’s figure, a presentation to the crown.

“Absolve me of me sins, Saint Paul,” John whispered, close, mock desperate, petals raining from the bannister, and Paul whipped his head up, clattering glare of brandy purple. A stone dropped in John’s mirror, recognition, connection.

“Why d’you ‘ave to be such a goddamn _twat_ all the time, Lennon. Shove it fer once, would you?” Paul gritted, circumventing around all that sear that lit off in his expression, in the subdued enclosure, pressurizing his phrases to pop, leather bound, rooftop concerts and the plot of Pride and Prejudice to a lovely, lilting confusing.

“Oh, _I’m_ sorry, did I interrupt—,” John commenced again, faulty reflexes, but Paul had turned his back and headed to a door, a door that lead to the outside and the unexplored, irresponsible, before John could finish his soliloquy. Extinguished to wisteria, German fairytales of null, Paul had once again released unto the atmosphere, scraped knees of childhood and fading naivety.

Paul had pressed a cup of tea to John’s grasp and sat him down backseat, out of control, out of hold, and John stared off dumbly to dust and space before trotting to keep on, halfway out, spilling light into the moody chapel, brisk air hitting him a serenade, calling teal reprimands into the latter half of the day, “Where d’you think _yer_ off to?” The pack-thick coat of a vindictive silver stallion, Paris chased and wandered with bodies black and rouge; stood out from she and he, Paul was hands in pockets, collar popped, unobservable as John stumbled three steps behind. “Oi, slow down there, the churches ain’t goin’ anywhere.” Paul stiffened with that, shouldering on, censoring birds in the sky and roses in the gardens.

John beat titanium forward, wobbly fat cherubs preaching this boy was off his rocker, that John was a snapper himself for that rush of adrenaline peaking in his veins. Paul scooted on to the breadth of the street, the flow of an unexplored America across the asphalt sea whereas the courtyard spilled unto the earth, a gift of Pandora’s box; _They were escaping_ , streaking across the pavement away from government-supplied guardians and foil ancient churches and Mimi’s needlepoint provision—Christ wasn’t that a notion? Paul had commanded the crusades, erected that bronze statue of prodigy, liquored mercury. John was _ecstatic,_ shaped with reverence atop bookshelves. He swung a palm out to clasp Paul’s shoulder, the scratch and padding, blackbirds taking flight, and it was as though Paul had _estimated_ it, crystalline fountains exploding in spectacle, and he turned to face John so abruptly that John only just braked a step before running into the young man.

 _“What is it?”_ Paul snapped. His face had sobered like Lent, lips a line of formidable annulment, the siren to lure demise. Paul had seemingly, so forcefully, disregarded any optimistic association that the concentrated leak of wrath poured from his expression and set the states in station.

“What is it you could _possibly_ want now?” He raised, but he was not broken, no, he was fully whole without John, and it interposed him, sprawling into the chasm.

For John was once stolen delight and dynamic eruption, and now reeled _frozen_ , knocked out of the tower, Paul an asteroid screaming to the earth, ice and flame, stepping closer, staking into John’s bleary-eyed glow. Yet, his façade dropped in an instant, noticing a manifestation behind that of John’s shoulder, a pursual, a perusal, of royal guards fanning out of the church nigh to catch attention, before Paul was sprinting in the other direction, an assault, a blur of dark. Toffee and pocket change, John twitched into motion, legs awake on Marathon, the grass and the trees and the breeze and the cement playground: John followed Paul down to the underworld.

Narrow allies clicked metal and glass, street markets strawberry and trout, the two boys flew, a grate against the monarchy and pinned-lapel propriety, footsteps pounding the cobblestone history, side-by-side, tugging the other behind doorways and fountains in coexistence with concealment, borne freedom, John in his most radical red, Paul his deepest fervent blue until they stood, panting, whirring, bent over behind a bakery entrenched in flour and éclairs, coughing into their sleeves, revolutionary liberation, Vive La France. Like finishing off a long set, John was grinning, spinning, tipping off the deep end, Paul’s eyes framed and new, cheeks blustered cabernet, mouth wet around his oxygen like the first bite of a peach, cutting through the skin in fleshy and soft.

The rush stilled, Paul unfolded, and started coolly off down the sidewalk as before, the mantra of the day, seclusion, to which John mimicked and cemented steel-hued amusement, “Done bein’ a prissy tart, then?” wounded matter at Paul’s non-response.

Paul was uncaged determined barreling across Europa, pausing before emerald aluminum street signs, mouthing their names soundlessly to the permanence, and withdrawing that shoddy, cliché guidebook again from the sleek lining of his overcoat, a cocked gun in a Bond film.

John couldn’t _stand_ it, trotting along in thought and overthought silence, a show horse yet to win a race, as Paul forged onward, avoiding burning beams and falling men, impervious to the love-struck fog to some obscure, delusional destination, migration of geese.

Wine-mad fixation, John snatched abruptly the damned book from Paul’s scholarly infatuation, ponds frozen over in December’s New York, but for that reedy pull, Paul dryly responded with a stony, black tea, “Give it back,” nothing more, no anger, no fervor, no radiance, and John was near to imploding for all that he concealed, swooning doves circling the boy’s figure, emitting memory. He demanded a sheen of reaction from Paul, wanted to scream into his blasé mask, _Look! I exist, Paul! I’m holding your precious, pathetic map! See me breathe and see me roar!_

Poetry departed and Paris was colorless.

“Now why would I do tha’, luv?” John prodded, disastrous detestation leaning in his voice, biting down, incisors and tug. They could clash, set the city ablaze with everything they found insufferable about the other. Conceit and obstinacy and egocentricity, Paul and John, the same soul, detached forms.

Tempting the deserts, a flash of resolute, cayenne passion illumed Paul’s protection, monsoons in his murky eyes. It was positively mesmerizing. Planes surged overhead and trains to the country and Paul was downright _breathtaking_ , the chord of a harp, imported mink and myrrh. Though, he didn’t offer John another moment, hissing, _“don’t need the bloody thing anyway,”_ before striding off and cutting round the corner, independent of all law and order.

And as John too followed, foolhardy imprudence dipping in with the cracks, blind through the mist and the fluid, he saw it.

La Tour Eiffel, curvy bird she was, magnificently done across, wrought iron lattice, out of your league. And Paul was twenty meters away in the forefront, prominent to Her Lady in the backdrop whispering through the fog, stock-still and staring at John in “I told you so” fashion, eyes piercing, John the keeper of the Guide Book for all his draconian disbelief. John was spools a mile long, yarn undone in his fingers, looping around that tie-dyed reality, that spur of feeling that he could punch Paul in his concealed satisfaction or kiss him to Tuesday for the deliverance.

_He led me to the fucking Eiffel Tower._

 

***

 

What was Paris was every bleedin’ couple on the face of Christ’s spurned and rejected Earth snogging under the trees and the interlaced catacombs of the Tower, pushing their tongues down each other’s throats to find the holy grail or some cartoon shred of meaning in their vacant whore-y lives.

The two climbed the damn Iron Lady, took near to forty minutes, too, Paul interjecting after every other flight to take photographs, camera round his neck like a fruity newspaper boy. John regrouped his senses after his emotions had seized control in a coup, and fell into impatient cross and loathing the shade of massacres.

Surrounded, outnumbered, love was a chancy concept to John; he couldn’t look it right in the face, always missing a scrap to complete the illusion, because that’s what it was, a mocking, dancing satyr holding a vine of grapes and a lyre interceding that he, in his robes and throws, _loved you_. But, love _really_ meant exposure, bearing your chest and handing them the knife; vulnerability was for the fools and the birds and John professed neither. So he glinted at Paul through slatted lids, uninformed lips, crossed arms as he dragged life from a ciggy and slew smoke into the batter gray clouds, for what he would remember from that altitude was not the stretch of the city that every painter and starry-eyed dame made love to, but the crinkling around Paul’s eyes peering through the lens, lip turning in concentration, the part of his dark hair in the wind. The heart in his chest beat loud and real. Love was a soddin’ mistruth.

A fox and a canine, John and Paul contained the day within the hours, tiptoeing around themselves, removed from the other like land mines, landing close to day fall outside one of those flirty little cafes with en plein air tables, like in the housewife magazines, that should smell like wafting whipped butter and crackling crust but left the taste of wet brick and cigarettes in your mouth, for even cowboy casanovas settled down.

Statues frothed by the chill, they ordered in mismatched sock French and finished their food outside, collars to the wind, waxen paper ruffling to fill the empty latches. The stuff was okay, expensive and soggy and greasy on his fingers, but what _really_ knocked John out was the piano, black mammoth and transcending view. It sagged on the stone street outside the café in a trashy small piazza with cream square ground, bloated ignored by humanity’s follies as postcard tourists with names like Christopher and Diane, who hated their home lives and their screaming, squabbling children so they took a trip to Paris to enliven the night only to find that their days had forgone long ago, passed by in indecent carelessness. John was wiping his mouth with a sleeve, silver metal cuff buttons, and Paul was walking over to it, the great forgotten beast, thin form laconic with that daily enhancement of defiance. It was almost amusing at that point.

He sat down at the bench, running his fingers along the keys, a recounted admiration for missing time, for surely he knew of John and his menacing observation and commenced with his actions out of wiry spite. Danish clockwork, he placed the camera atop the closed jade lid, shifting once more in his seat, rolling his shoulders smooth, and John called out to him, corks popping in the night, “Oi, tha’s not yers. Somebody’ll clock ya fer bangin’ around on it,” chewing through another bite.

To which Paul saucily continued, not even flicking a shade over in a glance, “I ain’t afraid of no man,” and surging onward to the ironsmith with a slender melody kinking the stone and mortar, a liaison that fragmented John back, years and years to Julia, to the crooning purr of the melody tacky sticky through the radio reception in the glitchy-colored living room, auburn red and crackling frost, sagging davenports and shouting matches after John’s bedtime:

_Dear, it seems years since we parted,_

_Years full of tears and regret;_

_I've been alone broken hearted,_

_Trying so hard to forget—_

Paul was durable proficiency, years of practice parting at the bone, fingers skimming across the white and black, tapping out Dionysus intoxication with his theories, expression taut with concentration, head slipping back and forth at the bounce and dagger of his fingers’ roaming. The other patrons of the café had stolen interest suddenly, congregating in bundles of balloons, walnuts on the countertop, with their scarves and simple-minded fascination at the cutesy, brown-haired boy with the magic touch, a fantasy of their fantasy. Paul had gone through the full once and started up another repetition, not that anyone else would have noticed, when John floated over too, and sat down on the bench besides.

Paul wasn’t playing it right, the song, it rung off too upbeat, too hopeful. Music was about the core expression to John, to inexpressible extremes, and Paul was dressing up featherweight love and wonder in a song about abandonment and longing. At the crescent peak, John relaxed his fingers on the keys, pads touching the familiar brash power, and improvised something low and melancholy in heart aching harmony with Paul’s prospect that spoke of the fields and the wishes in the breeze. Music lulled the souls of the broken and Paul raised his olive eyes to settle on John’s, fascination narrowing the space between them, incomprehensible understanding of everything possible, all that lay before them, mouth open slightly as if to speak, but only wetting his bottom lip before scanting back to the piano.

 

***

 

Late as the evening, the two royals arrived at the hotel miraculously after a day of pirated escapades, escorted directly to their rooms wordlessly, to where, apparently, Master of the House, Brian Epstein was at the phone for John, and rather displeased in his regulations and decorum. Paul sluffed off and tossed down into a lounge chair, collapsed picnic blanket wilting in June as the children played by the riverbank, arm overflowing from the sides; he could feel the kitschy sewn patterns in rust and mustard kissing antique to his skin. The day weighed coal harbor to his consciousness, bleary in and out, registering loftily John’s exchange of words with the head guard by the door, a man in cherry uniform, tassels like languid starfish stretched out upon his shoulders idiotically, clear enough that he was overly-proud to adorn them, his chest busted out, breeching the buttons like a birthright. Slipped coin and wool, John paid less than a cent of attention to the man, abruptly ciphering off the dialogue with a mock salute and a significant tug of the tassel, spinning on his heel and striding off in military-like fashion to the phone. Paul laughed quietly to himself, a fluke reaction, Pinot Noir and cutesy scalloped edges until he reproached himself internally to keep stolid as he’d managed the whole day. He softed a hand through his hair, the secrets of the forest. It felt greasy.

John stood then by the table at the opposing wall with the telephone, ten steps out from the Drooping Paul, slipping off his jacket, the one with the lost button on the right sleeve, not that Paul had noticed entirely as the climbed the Tower, hand at the bannister smartly, the finger without a ring, but sadness crept up unusually when he realized there was no button there.

The phone sat idly at the line, vision narrowed solely on its promise, but John took his rich time, lighting a fag with a match, cupping the orange glow and wisping the flame dead in the air, the lonesome night of spring and its dutiful lamplights, before lifting the item from its cradle luminously, nonchalantly, pinky out like a burdened, done-up housewife on a Thursday afternoon, rolling his eyes to the moon and back, a performance only Paul would witness, before drawing a, “Well, you’ve missed me then, ye soft git,” from the base of his toes, curling and vibrating through his form and off his tongue like a crucifixion lullaby. His head rested slightly bowed, hand on the table and matching blindly some spot on the floor.

He dragged life and desire from that ciggy, thin lips procuring the smoke of the gods, medicinal bloodline, purple drafts rippling in the dense, low-lit hotel room. The sink and shallow of the lounge chair pulled Paul in, huddled him into the cushions, pleaded for his undivided loss, sleep a dangerous lover and John remained quiet, presumably listening to the crooning on the other end, the endless rants of _Where have you **been**? You **what**! Unbelievable! And you call yourself royalty? You’re acting like a thug for Heaven’s sake, John! _ Paul could imagine days worth of Brian’s blueberry worries, enough to fill the seats at the cinemas with his characterization, the waves of Brian’s side-combed part and posh brown-eyed attention.

Paul curled into a sweet-edged, heather hued smirk, lines matching up in the fuzzy atmosphere, Belgian make of modern euphoria. The day lipped by in flashes, flashes of the churches cream and overruled, flashes of freedom, breeze and commandments, flashes of John, mosaics of wonderment and crash-collision muse. For what had Paul done? Defied the monarchy? Fraternized with the illicit? Snuck out of some crumbling fold of history before his very skin wrinkled in time? John had wanted it, Paul had understood, witnessed the thawing pleading displacement in his eyes, _save me, a son of God._ So Paul did. He, _in no right_ , forgave any act of John, nor condoned his swan-sung behavior; Paul fought for himself solely.

“S’that right?” John messed along with the corkscrewed phone line, stretching it out and back like footprints through railroad tracks, winking and observing the elasticity like Newton and his pearly laws. He was a scientist, that John Lennon, wacky and chewing on the breadth of the ciggy paper to balance betwixt teeth. He blew smoke out the corner of his mouth, a dragon of master defiance and avoidance, cradling the phone against his ear scantily.

John was John, every part of the day defined it that way, pestering disturbance, raw dissatisfaction, blazing amazement, corded detestation, and split-image sameness in Paul’s marble-cut relief. Plunking fingerpads against the loafed arm of the loveseat, he retraced the notes of the song of the afternoon likewise from the piano, John’s eerie melody the sequel of his own, sincerity meeting Paul like a goodbye from the bus stop, fleeting flow of melancholy truth, that cracked something that indefinitely hid from day.

“Oi, slow down there, boyo, lemme get somethin’ to take this down on,” John tugged Brian along comically with his bold stature, fiddling with his tie now absently all the while, gaze reflecting to the tender in the cotton thread fondly.

But, that was the coronation then. John’s amusing fundamentals, ability to slip under the radar with cunning, the bells in bronze peals to cool a summer wedding, captivating Paul to insanity.

He snorted at the commentary, airy golf chatter and thoughtless patter, and plucked John’s attention for a shimmering, diffident moment, lidded eyes and jet lag, kiwi fuzz all over. John rayed gilt; emitting royal light, copper opportunity. It was a truce set in the flowry wallpaper of the hotel. So set John off, a scarf knit of lies and puns and avoidance, mixing slag expressions only Paul could see and endear, fits of shuffled snickers dancing in that isolated room facing out to the mourning city. “Let’s see. We went to a matinée; they’ve got loads of those ‘round here in France Land,” John lied, poking through his teeth hotly, “then to Versailles,” pronouncing it all wrong, double L’s a sinful catastrophe, “Paulie of course wanted a round with the prostitute we kept,” Paul sent a beaded pillow soaring across the way for that one, missing and hitting the desk with a contented thud, “‘nd finished the day off by beatin’ up some old cad in an alley.” John was pacing sidelong in his socks, waistcoat unbuttoned and chaste, as instructions had been received to dress “appropriately” and “properly,” disheveled to the point of attraction, diversions and straight-faced illusion, the kind that sluts named Rosalee or Daphne had seen after sex, witnessing disinterest on the older boy’s face in mass murder.

Bobby pins and streaking makeup, John was fading from the conversation, from Brian’s obvious dislocation; since the Master of the House was not standing prevalent before him upon that Paris, John couldn’t give less, toes in the sand, miles out of bounds. He was untouchable.

“She couldn’t clear her _busy_ schedule to ring me up ‘erself? Gettin’ worn out, the old bat,” John threatened, more tired than anything, Paul could hear it, the pour of tea after drunkenness.

A clack of impulse rowed soundlessly through the veins of the room like heat waves out on the sidewalk, blue winding evenings, John plowing along with undermined spirit, “ _His Grace_? Why he’s the epitome of health ‘imself! Only lost one eye in the street brawl, a miracle really. You should’a seen young Paulie with a lead pipe, got a mean swing in those chicken arms.” John clouded his fingers through his hair, folding it back coarsely and Paul couldn’t find the energy or reason to be irritated anymore. John didn’t mean it like _that._ He never meant it mean, Paul could perceive, consciousness a windstorm. Loose under bridges, back and forth from London to Paris, John sought out goodness and genuine possession, just processed and packaged it so uniquely from any other acceptable and elevated person Paul had ever been exposed to within his circle. John walked along, talked along, presented to the court like some Scouse boy grappling wildy along the edge, blackout darkness and some big crazy dream. And Paul was there with him, slipping and cutting a different mountain range to the peak of that mesmerizing, phantom _thing_ they both yearned for in their sleep and slung desperately out to grasp. He caught that briefly and thoughtfully in John undone.

Détente filtered in like grubby dust and blunt radiation squelching to the windows, black asphalt echoing peace, until John scoffed and sighed, elegant provocation, “Oh, you’d fancy _tha’_ , wouldn’t ye?” before hanging up, a neutral deconstruction.

John decompressed from his rainbow-scaled high, stage lights dissipating, white cotton dress shirt rolled up to the temper of his elbows, glowing eyes of amber and honey, observing Paul from the side, a breath of wait, of weightlessness, every minute of the world ahead of them, dodging deep in the murky waters, “Tuckered out already?” his fingers were ticking, rubbing against each other, obnoxious rivets, “those Churches really got ye goin’ didn’t they?” lukewarm tenderness in his voice, bubbling soda and a calm low-level resort.

Paul rolled his eyes gauntly, sat up with what motor skills he could manage, and yawned, a dimple and an Elvis sneer, eyes flitting open and shut in an uneven blink, “Oh yes, quite right; every Blessed Mother and stained-glass window gets me harder than the last,” Paul muttered, buttery slow.

Linens on the line beating shortly in the currents, John laughed at that, full-bodied and emphatic, a rush of flurries to the dying dawn, affection clear as day on his face, youthful remainder of something forbidden, something John had disowned himself for once already, madness in the dark that lead him astray when it brought him to the wolf.

Paul bore down beneath his skin, but blinked the vision away as he stood, legs like sheaths of wood, shrugging off to bed with luminesce flipped off, the mesh of clothes falling from his frame in spreads of snow, frigid to the muscles, the divots tucking to the mattress. John, too shifted under, facing upwards the ceiling as Paul did, upwards to the skies and everything up on ahead, hands laced to his chest. Silence plugged, the race of the day sharpening Paul’s awareness of John, once again, _John_ , Paul dripping to the crinkling paper, the twine holding the box together, static electricity shocks, running him round in the most obvious circles where some stubborn, hurt barrier stood in the way. John before the Eiffel Tower, glinting back at Paul, jacket in hand and slung over his wrist casually, meringue and madeleines, to where Paul was losing breath, losing space and time, couldn’t hardly think about a damn thing but to snap a photograph before the action was lost to history and every scattering dust of the solar system.  

Sliding of the sheets, John angled his head to Paul’s, still area snuck between, hair delicate against the pillow, “Got a thing for the Blessed Mother then, do ye?” His lips cemented a staid line of immovability, though his eyes shined with the radiance of the sun.

Lovingly, fresh bread and sun-sweet berries, Paul managed a sleepy, sharp-tongued, “Cheeky,” the familiar tightness returning to the space in his lungs. And though he didn’t chance a glance over before John rolled and faced the other way, he could feel the older boy’s placated smirk through the opaque, in the abstract, shapeless shadows on the walls, humming and luring him to sleep to the sound of lonesome piano and forlorn rainfall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T h a n k s for reading and being patient with me! Peace and love and I'll update again soon-ish! Comments are totally welcome and I love them a lot! <333


	11. Nous Sommes Allés à Paris (Part II)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah! I'm so sorry this chapter actually took FOREVER, I've never had so much difficulty writing before gosh. Also, I know I promised my poorly-written smut for this chapter, but this chapter got really, really long, so it's being saved for the NEXT one (but, it's there, I promise!)

_Il pleut et nous tombons_

Curtains draw and angels weep.

The brush of time, noblesse oblige, slow and patient accumulation, bathed in dim and full Renaissance light, John blinked himself to consciousness to realize he was alone. Pure and dark, blackberry jam spread thick, where Paul once rested, a mess of tumultuous sheets and cordially designed rumples in the ruin simply resigned. Anxious summons of early rainfall collapsed on the structure, the lightly flowing tap tap tap of new and old with the flow of careful drops, a metronome slide, each predestined for greatness. White noise, gray scene, black thought, John sat up, calliopean panic shooting tremors in his chest, heroin design, premier thought to call for the guards, that his most wondrous, ponderous betrothed had escaped in the night, a bandit of the urban, lost unto the cliffs of the earth.

Unnecessary and sudden, really, and John would immediately experience the repercussions, filtering and swelling knowingly in the spaces and clerestory of the room, as there sat Paul, at the petit table by the window, backlit by the cloud-through luminescence, legs sprawled beneath the mahogany, leaning forward, spreading preserves across a bun, eyebrows stowed across his forehead in coarse concentration, nose bunched at the top with sharp eyes narrowed in pursuit. Tigerlilies by a pond, engrossed in time and space, he slipped the pad of his finger to his mouth briefly, past the fullness of his lips, the touch of skin and warmth there, ignorant bliss of John, who watched in entirety, in endorsed fervent examination, skin hot and charged with the action, fevered charcoal. John could’ve criss-stowed the length of the room, taken Paul’s head in his hands, and claimed a kiss from those lips, sweet vanity of Strawberry, nuisance to the senses, fur and diamond luxury.

The striped blue and white linens of his pajama set remained in aimless extravagance on the hardwood, a heap of art; Paul was fully dressed, John realized, poplin checked shirt and a navy wool jumper, snug to his form. The boy looked right proper, plucked straight from the choirboys, no wonder Mimi clipped him from her radar. Though as Paul registered John’s cognizance, he curled his gaze over, none of it mattered, the lighting and the innocence, for in a gaze, despite childhood laughter and judgment, lay irresistible and provocative, that dangerous, determined self-knowledge that Paul could tear him apart, lead anyone to destruction, long eyelashes and that sweet, harrowed voice. His graceful swooping lines looped John in, cramping acknowledgment of that wavering notion of his bodied and traitorous sentiments, Paul the renaissance. The rain plucked strings and pelted cubically.

Paul pinched a ciggy resting from the ashtray, sucking and spilling out dawn-colored smoke, translucent through the overcast, talking around his aura, low and trained, “Nice of you to show up,” averting his gaze down to that morning’s paper, pastel Magnolias.

 

***

 

The torrents encapsulated them, rocking side to side at street level, whisking them away into the sodden, flickering gloom, umbrellas and all, smudged paint to a palette, Degas’ ballerinas contained by some invisible, ruthless force. Paul watched from the window, their staggered, hammered movements, plays of ants, chin resting on hand, gloomy black keys. It was about nine PM and they, Paul and John, had wasted the day off, each raindrop a dismal daydream, smothered in noiseless reading, a slip of fingertips and parchment, and bracketed rainbooted isolation, distances kept across the room; I ignore the gazes and you, the long-shot glances, as mistakes and absent-frenzied lapses of information to the brain. Time-out, Paul had memorized it as, for their little escapade, their elopement of freedom the day before, silver-footed securities their Big Brother breathing hollowly outside the exits, all doors locked, no way out but the window. Steam quartered at the stark of the window, where Paul pressed his thumb; he held the emerald awareness John was watching. John was _always_ watching, curtseying round taffy and granite.

Battered over the symphony of the elements rose John, or rather, ceased him from pacing as had been his tactic for the previous five ticks since he’d stood from his velvet-stuck chair by the fireplace. Eyes shiny, the immature, sullen glint of a pint, raptures of lightening captured from the very millisecond, hair losing its fold and hold with each run through and tug, he stationed himself steady as a coal train and announced with the crescented, majestic duty of a lion, breath chosen, “We’re gettin’ drunk tonight.” His vocal chords thrummed and ran with the steady chase of a violin against its strings and Paul’s ears rung with it.

Paul slid his view over, turning his neck in a lithe, sure movement, tundra chase and midnight strike, to berate John impressionably with his unamusement. John was deliciously enraptured with Paul, all attentions caught; Paul could watch him like a leopard. Fate sung her harp. Trapped. All doors locked. No way out but the window.

“Are we now?” Paul panned, flat-toned, unimpressed, glazing dazedly like intrusive seasonal heat descending a Sunday morning’s abandoned church service. But, John glowed and simmered, reckless lose-yourself-in-me eyes, sublime control as he procured from beneath the holy levels of garments in his suitcase, hazelnut and vanilla, a nectarine-molten glass bottle of Scotch. His Highness held it up and the light clung through the liquid like honey and poison—Paul was sunk on it, or rather, the boy holding it with passion heightening the candor in his grin, either was the same.

John floated off to a side then, roses in the downpour, crowding glasses of coke by the alcohol and mixing the two, whistling some nondescript tune in nonchalant swift, Jekyll and Hyde, pressing the squat, devoted crystal to the cup of Paul’s hand with a side-mouth smirk, eyes slatted low and peering in, the tobacco-shaded liquid murmuring destinations of Styx and Hades. Paul eyed it, fizzling up, suitors to the rod-iron gates, wondering whether or not he should plunge his perception beneath the influence, considering the results of previous encounters when his head danced above the clouds and kissed the stars, until John clinked their shares together, fluid sloshing and tossing like a ship at sea. Rough pull of wool, forgotten responsibility, edges filmy and hazed, a guiding finger, belonging to the Prince, tipped the bottom of Paul’s glass up and to his mouth chivalrously, and, wilting cotton and smooth cedar, the burning rushed to his tongue, acid and enamor. John mimicked the movement with his own, some cutesy dumb way, sharping his eyes to Paul, metamorphosis in the orange and golden room. They were crackling across the whirlpool, speeding out of control, locked fingers in each other’s grasp as they took themselves down together.

The night was still until it wasn’t.

Paris understood no boundary of time; monarchs they were, wings made them free. In the hour, two young men far from London were _alive_ with the murmur and feel of it all.

Walk one, two flight, three flight, four, glasses went down, voices went up, the radiance in Paul’s cheeks and the shimmering, slamming show in John’s eyes, as John, the medium, predicted, they were glowing, flowing, obliterated _drunk._ The room silked out of focus, walls breathing, touch of fabric sheets, glint of wallpaper thin, and Paul had shoved on a record, rock n’ roll, American-make, the only kind they knew, bracing the rafters and censoring bold luxury of thought and myopia spun round and round, beat and lyric striking loud and cruising low. Out of breath, Paul tasted his own rebirth on his tongue, a new man, catching the spirit of John topping off another round and nodding shocks of rough-edged hair to the bass line. Knocking around in a powder-white undershirt, sliding off the hinges in his socks, a Hollywood catch, Paul could trace John like a brainless Saturday-night flick, sideboards, sarcasm, sidelong leers solely for Paulie.

When Elvis faded on, Paul began the howling, copper scratched, and John joined too, not to be outdone in his own moonlight backstaged way, shouting like idiots above the smoky, romanticized throes of straining voices emptying their souls into the record player and beaming off the walls, shrieking and stuttering and all kinds of loss, for they’d seen the greats through black and white and static and they clung to that prolonged world restrained from white-gloved provision. The noise built from the base of their chests, professing anger, resentment, enmity, confusion, denial, sorrow, brokenness in a version the other could reflect and perceive better than real words. Lamplight faith, the hum of bees and flowr’y meadows, promises and despair, John’s voice carried, clear and genuine, like whisky and a broken heart, and Paul reeled, threefold, John peaking betwixt sucked breaths of desperation to crisp each lyric through slipped teeth and thin lips, filled lungs and all he could be upon some grand stage with screaming birds tearing their bobbed and bristled bunny hair from the roots through their lunatic tears—like some goddamn _vision_ it was—and Paul was a cornerstone of John’s through the mania, across the seas. Some moment it was, John’s lemony voice echoing off Paris, drunk and mystified. Blackbird singing in the dead of night.

Sweat stuck to skin, and between lapses of charge, they rocked back and forth about music ( _“Buddy Holly or Chuck Berry?” “Both” “Pick one, Macca” “Toss yerself, I pick both”_ ) and guitars ( _“Learned chords off a bleedin’ banjo” “S’that right? Yer a lucky bastard, Lennon. I taught meself with a shoelace string and a wooden box” “Oh, go on”)_ and gigs ( _“We play bars and wherever else will give Mimi a fit”)_ and the blonde sex of Brigitte Bardot ( _“The kind of tits ye just wanna… and her mouth, d’you ever just wanna—“ “*gasp* why I’ve never thought of doin’ **tha’** to her, always wanted to just sit ‘er down to a nice game of chess” “Some gentleman **you** are”)_ and that concept of fame so foreign to either of them but lilted and weighed on their hearts like a missed train.

Flowing seamlessly, John mussed his hair up like Elvis, handfuls of chestnut, and stomped deliberately across the mattress to the swaggering melody, Paul shuffling across the table, shifting, staggering, and shunning under the weight; strained, potent enmity had dissipated, what was left of it anyway, for the considerate moment, as Paul raised to watch John, completely infatuated with Elvis’ carrying melody, eyes scrunched shut with no other brace in the world but that present moment of imagined renown. For they were unknown to anybody, holed up in that hotel room, a smudge of incandescence on the city’s faltering façade.

With a leap and crash, Paul landed back on the floor, feet cement and shaking chandeliers, John roaring with laughter and leaning against the wall, head almost touching the ceiling, “Yer off yer rocker. Mimi’ll kill me if you break yer silly little head.” Proper prestige of the French, he wiped a grimy arm across his sweaty forehead, soot and satin, cheeks July peaches.

Paul pulled himself forth from the wreckage, wobbly, soppy, syrupy, and tilted his legs to dance, breathless, arms out and out of control, spinning and twirling back in Buckingham’s ballroom, foot over ankle and ditsy euphoric, grins and dimples and fiery excitement.

“Then you’ll jus’ have to save me, Johnny Boy,” Paul flirted, cradling perfectly well how he looked, doe-eyed, soft mouthed, long-lashed, like a sweet and tarty bird, and what it would do to John, who had withheld all the distance of the planets since their hallway embrace, whether it were embarrassment or varnished pride, Paul did not know, but John had recoiled some and Paul was to lure him back, to where John, too, lunged from the bedspread, tripping it off and to the rivers, and met the movements, grabbing Paul’s hands at the chorus and twisting off into some wrecked waltz, shuffling into the abyss. It was messy and crooked, the swell of the cavern, the howls of an earthquake, tripping over the other, crescendo reaching crescendo, silt-y slight grins plastered on their faces, faces close and glinting into each other, the whirling view from the window of a bus. Fabrics mend and their chests fit together in a rhyme, familiar sinking motion, and Paul felt some row of comfort, holding John to him and John to Paul, an ally, an angel.

Twill and suede, John rewrote the classics, centered a reality to crack the mood even just a hit, sobered Paul to the second, to what John Lennon was before the Scotch pushed into his bloodstream like an old friend. For John spoke of the engagement and Paul touched the cool, iron chains of union and recognized his purpose, a business deal, a social tool, a windpipe with no words or force that could change his empty, helpless lot.

“S’just a legal thing, y’know,” John pulled faintly from the thin, as though he’d eliminated himself on the subject with that exact phrase for weeks and finally, they surfaced under the surname Taylor comma Duncan, and Paul looked at him, off the road, unsure of what the other boy was even talking about. John’s eyes were cloudy, dark as the skyline.

“Doesn’t have to mean anythin’,” he continued and Paul was a misstep from outright demanding what John was trying to pull until he felt the gentle brush of skin against his fingers, where the ring should have been and where Paul had deliberately not put it on. The rough soft burned. John’s fragility whispered laconically, the feeling irresistible, drugged stupor.

And John was staring, sincere yet distant, stunning him, marring the light, so Paul followed on with, stomach tense, throat tight, “Nothin’s changed then,” and it was almost a question. Almost. John’s face was placated and neutral, safely so, a contrast to the music, a valley. John was far off, back somewhere in London where Paul couldn’t find him, pain dull on his insides, mechanic where they once had made music. It preached unnerving, unsettled and cancelled, seeing nothing through empty, glazed eyes.

What could anyone have done then? It frightened Paul almost, that John could distance himself so instantly, lock himself off to Paul. That irresistible dream returned, that they could be all right together, that the sun, too would rise, and it cut Paul like a forest.

Paul bore into those unseeing eyes, calloused hands stuck against each other, clasped together, bound and borne to secrecy. Paul was bleeding out; John, losing his grips. His hair was slipping across his forehead, dark with sweat, dark like the glimmering, heaving coat of a stallion. He stared off somewhere to the side like some bird was whistling off behind Paul’s shoulder, catching John’s attention.

Yet, they were alone. A soul would not know of the activities of the Prince and the Duke if they’d written a check off it.

Paul couldn’t confess clearly why he did it, must’ve been the empty bland painting of John cracked open and raw, or the soft touch, or the grate of alcohol surging definite in his belly low, but, fields of fervency, green grass blown, he planted a big, extravagant, stagey dumb kiss on John’s cheek then, almost to displace the moment and the discomfort, the skim of warm skin against his lips a halo.

John lit up like Mardi Gras, some covered, coveted glint of surprise in his eyes, snapping thought back into Lennon’s skull, that here was Paul, a living, effervescent object of the Lord. John erupted, embers and champagne bubbles as he spun Paul back out away, away, away, and swirled him back in for a sultry French dip, the long lines of Paul’s throat and the darkened throw of his head back and slow.

“Oh yer a real catch, Macca,” John teased, rolling his eyes, Paul’s own fluttering shut dramatically, eyelashes that of a Hollywood babe, butterflies bobbing to the horizon.

“I was thinkin’ the same thing,” Paul winked an eye open to catch John watching him fully, unabashedly, before reaching out fingers to the bed, dipping along the mattress and pinching a pillow off, walloping John directly and precisely in the face, swooping gulls through the clouds. Titanium summer sprung to John’s face, clenched fingers and a heart’s pace, red rivers flowing to the ocean blue, and he too grabbed a pillow, surging after Paul, already halfway across the room, jumping from landings to avoid impact. He sent pillows in Paul’s direction, each missing the mark, hamartia, until one torpedo clicked with a lamp and shoved it off, shattering in glazed pottery and one-sided darkness. Yet, Paul still raced on, snorting and choking on his laughter, Odysseus’ curse, the height of the song sneaking off high and heavy until he panted and collapsed back on the bed, facing up to the ceiling, to God, breathing ragged and slurred. John collapsed backwards too, a neighbor, heat flipping off him.

Within the excitement and rowdy catastrophic, the only words Paul managed to the surface were, “Me mum’s dead, y’know,” through ragged damp breaths.

Paul could count the beats in his ears, the pulse and pump of life.

“Mine too,” John stated, almost absently, hollow echoes of the past, sorrowful through the pines.

“Cancer,” Paul filled in, to which John replied, “hit by a car, dead before she even touched the ground.” Paul watched John form the words with his lips, rickety and stiff, emotionless to the point of emotion. Paul could feel every inch of his clothing laced to his skin.

“S’kinda funny. It was a policeman who did it. Drunk off his face, the sorry clot,” John minted emptily.

“You o.k.?” Paul thought was sufficient.

“S’fine. Didn’t see her much anyroad,” John stuffed. He was lying. “Mimi took me away before it happened. Thought I was headed for the gutter,” he stapled a shifty laugh and lulled his head off to the side, glassy, away from Paul.

Like the naked branches of the trees rustling and scratching against the mid-October sky, Paul felt that craving feeling for something more, something solid to stand his feet on.

The record rode on in a clipped loop, a stallion across the vale, and Paul was sure the conversation was dead, head swimming and sick, but John picked up the sleeve of one of the Elvis records and sat up, studying it, then, in turn, studying Paul’s face, “kinda looks like you,” pausing in notion, “I dig it.”

The storm outside peaked late after midnight with the swirl of the liquor diminishing and dwindling, strained on its threads with the hours. The music was shut off, headaches settling in, fatigue a bass line, memory gapping out of consciousness, nothing concrete to cling onto. Before everything faded to the dim, Paul could recall an apology murmured from John’s intoxicated lips, _“I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry,”_ he stuttered, baring something unnatural, something so vacant and fragile that it terrified Paul, exposure so charred and real, a deniable truth for the morning that John would neither remember nor confirm, _“I’m sorry,”_ John repeated, but for what, he didn’t specify, for everything or for nothing it didn’t matter, because Paul brushed the ash from the surface and shrugged it away; a drunk apology wasn’t an apology. Yet for a glimmer in the early morning hours, Paul resurrected trust, that friendship bloomed beneath the snow and that rooted hectically in his veins and bones was affection and admiration, that he felt something so dangerous for John that it made his head spin. In the mast of this boy, his white-lined _brilliance_ , his contaminated, shadowy rawness, les glorieux, Paul had found the most beautiful and apocalyptic desire, a desire to know, a desire to love, a desire to _be_ , and Paul too yearned for this, for the surface to meet his own and entangle as one. Rough, brash, molten, Paul was losing his hold on his implacable denial and detestation, morphing into sandstorm and hurricanes, John new and exuberant, John an object of _love_ , spinning and twilling through the dark and drunk.

Morning broke and Paul was passed out on the sloping chair facing the fireplace, head tilted to the side, breathing even in the unperturbed silence, the storm broken and cleared. He awoke with a groan, eyes adjusting to the still-darkness of the chamber, groaning at the incessant, uncomfortable press at his bladder, stumbling barefoot across the hardwood floors, moonlight breathtaking, to the bathroom, to relieve himself, noticing halfway through his disposal the reposeful form of John Lennon asleep in the bathtub, limbs hanging out the side, head knocked on the porcelain lid, chest rising and falling. His hair was plastered to his forehead with dried sweat, shirt unbuttoned all the way down the front exposing smooth skin and a lean stomach. The faucet by his head dripped and he was pretty cramped and exposed, but Paul smiled to himself. He was all right, John was. For all he’d done and failed to do, he ended up in the bathtub, which was much better than the gutter.

 

 

_Et l’amour commence_

 

 

Marble pillars, courtship of the gods.

Golden embellishment, lavished for emperors and his whore consorts.

Quiet floors for the sorrows and the tears of the broken who seek the churches’ refuge to weep.

And Paul was fucking sick of them all. Another trip around the earth wasted in a goddamn church tour, dragging back to the hotel for the night, lamentation sinking in presses of arrogant plum and weary fugitive beneath the horizon, the fourth day.

He slammed the door, peeling parchment, the crumbling decay of an empire, asteroids his heir. John simply tossed his coat to a chair and went to the side-drawer for a smoke, rugged boy he was, hadn’t spoken much of a word all day, rather withdrawn and hidden whole beneath something showery and rare. Paul prickled to the sideline; he craved the attention, the glowing fascination, raspberries in season, limes too.

Breathing was some task then, fluid frustrated in Paul’s stature, the way that things had gone, anticipating something with John that day that he never got, bruised glances in the graying luminescence that remained unreturned. “I want to go out,” Paul stated, memorizing the lines of John’s shoulders in his jumper, the roll and pull of the muscles and seams till it would be all he’d ever identify in the moonlit denial.

“You were just out,” John smoked in the dusk, the single window relieving his figure so it stood so stark, John a Mansion, John a Muse. Paul could write songs of it, notes and lyrics that he shouldn’t ponder in his light-headed, wispy luxury. Of a mouth that hissed sins and hymns and brought Paul to life, baptized in his nation, scuffed boots and sandy-red hair and soft skin that made Paul fired and coal to think about, gazing into the abyss and opting to jump.

“Not to some faggy church,” Paul snapped, the stem pulling tense, collapsing with his enclosure, whiskey and honey.

The movement was quite elegant. He looked like some French model from one of those magazines with the shiny, slippery pages, John did, the deliberate twist of his torso at the waist to face Paul, the bend at his right elbow, a wrist touching the other, cigarette to his mouth in lax self-reverence, smoke curling a catacomb round their world. “Little Paulie’s all wound up, is he? Wants to go to a bar like a big boy?”

“There’s one not two blocks down,” Paul propped, enraptured by John’s expression, the mild amusement, that orange hint of humor that ran his skeleton to life, that Paul was in fact real and interactive and lightening in the sky when he was around the older one. _I saw it on the way back. We could go, we could leave right now._ Paul tried to convince himself that he’d go even if John didn’t, but the thought was pneumatic and deflated.

“And how d’you suspect we’d _get_ there, me boy?” John drew, picturesque humanity, dawdling with his amusement.   
“You’ve got legs,” Paul reared, the piercing aim of design, nature blustery in his tone, stubborn in pursuit.

“As do the guards,” John flowed, eyes afire, the cheeky git.

Cinnamon in the flesh, cementing his argument stationary, Paul mocked too, “Some prince you are.”

John smirked with that, streaks of rain on the sill.

“Say we get past all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, I can’t take you out lookin’ like _tha’_ ,” John snuffed out his ciggy in the tray by the window.

The flash of maroon and bronze shook in Paul’s blood. He wore what he’d worn the day: dress pants and a tie of wool and noir and a china white dress shirt with creamy ivory buttons.

“Christ, it looks like I’m bringin’ a schoolboy to tea,” John laughed thinly, smeared thick, though it lacked its previous malice, the kind that venomed Paul a handful of days ago and sent him prancing through firestone fury.

Dark and cedar, Paul wouldn’t have it in any case, had sworn that vow that John would not step over him, a stag in ivory gardens, no truce to reckon, “Well, I didn’t ask yer pretty goddamn—,” but John was revelation and revival, stone symphonies and a leather-bound Bible, “Cool off, mate, we’re jus’ gotta fix ya first.”

Ambrosia set the room like a heavy sponge cake, frosting on the tongue, fingers through Paul’s hair. A record was stuck on, Elvis, and “Money Honey” played ironly as though it came from the parlor, flowers and youth sweet in the air as John slicked Paul’s onyx hair, smooth and wild, tousled where the cowlick didn’t meet, soot smudged tough. Paul observed him in the mirror as his fingers disappeared beneath the pieces to resurface above the treetops, combing off the ducktailed, fluffed ends into the mussed, misunderstood language of the Teddy Boys. John’s expression was soft in the mirror, third ciggy of the night hanging between his teeth coolly. The hazelnut allure in John’s eyes and Paul deflected his own sureness, leaning into the touch, nicking the air from absent lungs like an IOU; John was cyanide in his bloodstream.

Collars up to the wind and lopping down the tempered Paris street, hidden in shadows and Sunday-night forbidden, Paul wore John’s shirt, a plain black, as he’d only packed the nicest of his own and happened to disregard casual-wear as t-shirts. He forced his hands to his pockets, rubbing the material, rigidly refuting the touch and brush of cotton that was not his own against his chest, the smell of worn and sweet in the fibers, John’s heeled boots hitting the pavement by his side crossing to the bar.

Wind up toys and mountain peaks the voices of the bar mingled well with scotch and coke, a familiar coldness about the place as though Mimi had expected well off that royalty would make way with the commoners and the occupants were not satisfied as real people at all but the tools of a well-paid government. John sauntered off ahead, shifting through the foam of the masses to find drinks or a barman that spoke decent English, Paul observing roguely his stature wherein he was swallowed up by the red.

Bitter, brassy heat overcame Paul as he tipped off to the floor for dancing, huddled near the outskirts as he would wait for John to join. He comprehended roughly what malady had begun to ruin him in Paris, bonfires in John’s eyes, a melody in his cheeks, peace on his lips; it was that stupid, undermined realization of affection. Plaid and abhorred, he wondered when it had begun, when he stormed forward in ignoring the lethal and unkind and witnessed the flowers bloom instead. For, Paul’s heart beat louder and anticipation claimed his motion, though he still referred back to their kiss shrouded in the blue and blushed with unfocused, skewed confusion, that John could have felt the same and perhaps withdrew it presently.

Paul had crossed the border of awareness into a dreamlike postulation and twisted in and out of his own corralled speculations, until the twinkling, fairy-like tone of a pretty bird in blue and Mary Janes split his concentration, voice sherry and English posh, “S’cuse me, luv, I couldn’t help but notice you looked awful lonely over here by yerself, would ye like a partner to dance the next round with?”

Her hair was orange, like a tabby cat, with fringy bangs and big eyes, though Paul found himself completely disinterested and stared at her blankly. Her sky dress ended high above the knee, shoulders sloping delicately, though he found little to say as he revered her body and face alike. Some seconds passed, incrementally the fall of her expression, until a presence materialized behind Paul, lead and stolid and blazing over Paul’s shoulder.

 _“Quite eloquent tonight, aren’t we?”_ were the words whispered in Paul’s right ear, coarse salt and throbbing like a hot iron. They were the words of a boy who knew what he wanted, the words of John Lennon.

“You’ll ‘ave to excuse Paulie here, darlin’, he’s got a bit of the deafness, water in his ‘ead when he was a lad, can’t hear a drop of what yer sayin’, I’m afraid. Quite tragic, quite sad, yes,” John moaned about and Paul could’ve socked the clot for being such a hatter, but it was all incredibly humorous and he found himself grinning almost with the devastated façade of their young acquaintance, though she appeared quite enamored with her new target and displaced her observatory from Paul to that of John.

“My, that’s simply _horrible_!” She whisked on drowsily, a marital life of fish and chips and starched-dress domesticity.

“I’m John by the way,” John blurred, pressing Paul’s pint into his reflexively open palm to free up space to shake the girl’s hand, who stuttered out a balmy, _“Ann,”_ and carded her vision away from John’s eyes.

“Oh, but if yer not previously engaged to dance with another young lady, would ye care to—,” the poor, wretched loaf candled along with, but John had dropped his Shakespearean pledge and stoned the harlot short of her sentence, eyes dead in the water, expression gray, “That’s quite enough. Not interested. Good evening.” John bowed, Lancelot lost curiosity, and pulled Paul by the arm away from the dancing, gyrating, noise and seduction.

Paul eroded the shoreline with his enigmatic senses, rejoicing in John’s dejected princess gawking after the two boys, tartlets and treatise.

At the bartop, sipping away layers of the starchy liquid, Paul slung his glance over to John, who brandished a snarl with little difficulty.

“Such a beastly girl,” he growled into his glass, “‘ad more rottin’ teeth in her ‘ead than all of the English poor.”

“Yer quite the charmer,” Paul snorted, paper-thin cover-up for the dazzling amusement fizzing under his tendons.

John rolled his eyes and turned to face out towards the expanse of the bar, scoffing boldly, “Could’ve ‘ad her panties off in another Winston minute.”

“The crown jewel of England,” Paul drawled, still facing the other way to the lines and lines of liquor, modern art.

A pause in the fire ensued, John rolling off interest in Paul’s direction studying his profile nonchalantly as though reading a flier.

“Like you could do better,” John lured and leered, meaning and snakes in his material, in his molecules.

“I could and _have_ done better; she would’ve danced with a tree stump if it had eyes,” Paul laughed, almost in a different time zone, scattered in the cracks of the street.

“We’ll see,” John spoke into his beer again as if that solved anything.

There was a clock on the wall that ticked along doggedly, as though carrying the weight of the world’s faults, Saint Christopher’s legend, Atlas’ fate, and beating forward to eminent death. Paul felt incredibly whole in that moment, with John and Paris and this new game that poured feeling and tremors into his intentions.

Paul whirled suddenly to turn to John, who raised an eyebrow ever the slightest, beaming darkly, “Whoever gets the prettier bird to dance with him by the end of the night wins.” His heart bled golden.

John smirked twinly, “Wins wha’?”

Paul shrugged, putting his glass down, “Anythin’, I guess. Depends on who wins.” And with that, John burned higher, glistening against the timbers, “Deal, McCartney,” shaking Paul’s hand firmly before kipping off in the other direction. Margaret was a brunette, didn’t smile much but nodded in place of really any dialogue. She bored Paul, from the wave of her hair to the lumpy orbs of her knees to the round stubs of her kitty heels. Paul couldn’t get out the inquiry to dance within the five minutes he spoke with her, and concluded that Sweet Maggie Dear looked much fonder from across the room.

Then shone in Elizabeth, Irish accent weighing her words something profound, as though each phrase were an anecdote about her childhood scribbled in a diary somewhere to be burned and ashes to be danced upon to subdue rain from its cloudy domain. She spoke runes and railroads off Paul’s sanity until he was more drunk on her illusions than the cheap French alcohol. He might’ve walked off mid-nostalgia with his wits in stow, but he couldn’t be bothered to really sell full attention.

Horses in the glen, Paul searched occasionally for John, suave and prime, clipping out lovely ladies in yellow and peach, the kind you’d bring home to mum for dinner and wouldn’t fuck on the first date, the kind Paul McCartney never though John Lennon would be caught stupid to skip around. John was good, his charm never bellied, daisies twiddling their locks round their fingers and biting bottom lips; Paul was losing track of himself in absorbing the chiseled line of John’s jaw and his lidded eyes gazing down at the fawns as though he knew well their future and that he was a statement of it.

Falling Lucifer, Paul knew what he needed to do. What Paul was good at was the gentle boy, the “look into my easy eyes and love my sugary harmony, my delicate promise,” which was for some a dual toxin that could also play as a rough fuck behind the bathroom door and bites down your neck. And Paul found Caroline, sitting at the bar twirling the bud of her little finger around in her dolly, fruity drink, red lipstick and fooling everyone. Her hair was similar in color to John’s, a little lighter, a little sunnier, though her eyes were dark and intelligent, a Libra.

Hercules, Achilles, Zeus himself, Paul skimmed water to her side, her aura as though she were the Virgin Mary.

“This seat taken?” Paul tried for, politely, feeling a bit as though his father were watching; she shook her head, milkmaid reserved, a pleased, daffodil smirk on her candy apple lips. Paul sidled in, the Angel Gabriel. He was grinding off a buzz, a lavender lightness so different from the heavy, sopping drunk he was the night before, two francs in his pocket and a long way to go as he peered into her Tokyo-black eyes, brimming spring hope and winter cold.

“What’re ye drinkin’?” Paul splendored, resting his cheek upon his fist, beaded wedding gowns and the leather of boots, giving attention drivenly to her perfect frame.

She giggled, a lulling, lolly noise, the smell of new records and old denim. Paul took the nonresponse to be coyness and pursued even, enchanted Romeo, “I’m Paul,” reaching out a hand as he’d seen John do earlier, almost businesslike. She returned, a song of happiness in the throats of hummingbirds, “ _Caroline_ ,” calligraphy of French birth, the foreign meringue of a dainty, perfumed accent. The beautiful, magnetic, captivating dame was _French._

A still life, snow on a railing, Paul eclipsed and dissembled, fragmented phrases to court her to dance, “Um, well, je want to uh, dance avec toi?” Unceremoniously and brandy discordance.

Though, lace bordered her words, nightingales and edelweiss, beaming with what flowed from her butterfly garden, and Paul didn’t catch a script of what she conveyed, enraptured by the sound of her lungs spiriting the air, like music. Paul gawked terribly. Nothing stung clear. “Dance,” he repeated, pantomiming vaguely, though she appeared rather discouraged and appeared to be refuting and explaining something over again.

God’s majesty sprung out across the kingdom, thick with a feudal rivalry, “Qu’est-ce que c’est-ci?” A man materialized at the bar, not too tall, but fogged with anger, glancing viciously between Paul and the girl.

“I’m sorry?” Paul narrowed, elbow propped on the bar, feeling rather silly and out of place.

 _“What do you want with my wife?”_ The Frenchman proclaimed curtly, the shade of sunset, exclaiming and drawing attention. Clustered behind his emaciated, stereotypical body were three or other French-looking men, most likely his lackey acquaintances, flocks of territorial inbred boxers. They looked rather hairy.

“Wife?” Paul dodged over to Caroline, who shrouded an almost _that’s what I said_ expression.

“Listen to me, rosbif, I do not know what your intentions were,” the Frenchman skidded off haughtily, the cadence of his sentences dropping high and low, on and off the cobblestone.

“They were innocent, naturally,” a voice dropped, monotone, dislocated involvement, as John had cut his way across the bar like a crusader and now expected to swoop in and rescue Paul like some bloody martyr. Paul rolled his eyes, removing himself from the bar to stand at level as John looped around to face their foe, “And wha’ were _your_ intentions, Napoleon? What d’you want with this young lad?” John was bridging unlawful territory, smoke from the chimney. “I’ve ‘eard what you Frenchies like to do with a good English lad. Gonna try to take ‘im home with ye, were ye? Try to _ménage à trois_ with him and yer tart over there?” A few bystanders gasped at the crudeness, but the Frenchman seemed almost unfazed; he said nothing, just glared, cilantro and broken glass.

“C’mon John. Stop makin’ an arse of yourself,” Paul mumbled irritably, though rather taken aback by John’s up-frontness. They shuffled off to depart, panther smoke like sugarplums in the air above their heads, when something pierced the air, low and volatile:

_“Queers.”_

Paul pleaded that John didn’t hear it, that he knew John would go off if he did, any blatant charge at his sexuality, true or not, could set him off, but one glance at John’s earthen expression committed that he had. John pressed bull-headed madness, stalking back to the foreign corner, coarse and swift and socking the poor Frenchie in the mouth, tripping backwards and holding his jaw, where goodness unleashed and Paul too joined, bearing through le rouge, a cannonball to the port. His knuckles ached, oxygen burning, sweat pooling cheaply where John’s shirt clung to the small of his back, motion and emotion, a Baroque and Fauvism channeling his landscape. Heartbeat wrecked in his conscience, that he was sending himself ever-present to hell, grabbing fistfuls of shirt and connecting a thunder with the stomach of some poor stranger. The alcohol dwindled sadly in his system, though adrenaline preached satiated freedom. John whirled about, detestation towards the world and a missed life in his consuming palace.

Chocolate sorrows and midnight lust, Paul hadn’t expected it, the flash of rust, a punch to the face, which sent him stepping back and falling on his backside heavily, touching his cheek almost shocked. He felt so young, among the legs and feeling the heated pressure and mingling cut where the bastard’s ring had landed. Blood hit oxygen and turned the color of revolution. Discombobulated, he delivered a startling blow to the knee of a nearby swinging plight, but the fight was soon broken up and John and Paul were ratted out and tossed onto the pavement for their crimes. So much for the Grecian songs of heroes.

John was spitting and cussing and going on about this and that, nonsense all of it. In the dull streetlights, Paul padded a finger to the swell at his cheekbone tenderly, like the moon would heal his sorrows. John was still coughing off about his own exasperation, looking off down the empty street, the lamplights’ glow melancholy but soberly true, until he faced Paul for some sort of agreement.

Eyes caught immediately, widening and coursing like the Nile, “Fucking _hell,_ Paul, yer face!” John was frozen in time, made a mirror of its absence in the moment, frost skating across the thinness of a window.

The predatory worry in John’s expression swindled theories, theories in Paul’s mind, of caring and welfare and that maniacal, bloated swan song of affection. John’s eyes shifted with strength and heart, like a mid-step contemplation and Paul would watch it take place.

“S’not tha’ bad,” Paul found his lips moving mechanically, lithely; maybe he was more intoxicated than previously proposed. “I’ve been knocked worse before,” Paul added for no intention in particular, lifting his head a little to center his gaze fully and definitely on the older boy.

Atoms of carbon dioxide defusing through the solar system, rapid decline and maximum velocity, John sunk in to the words of Paul, seemed vaguely sickened by them, as though he’d just remembered that he, himself, His Majesty to the throne of England, had sunk a fist to Paul’s face not long back, sent him sprawling mindlessly to the earth like an unwanted toy, a horse with a broken ankle to be shot. It was as though as John looked at Paul, he saw his own punch staring right back at him in the bruising welt at the younger boy’s cheekbone. Remorse slid down his face, Jupiter’s moons, and John defied the seconds of the clock, hand extended to touch the swelling, split purpling plum skin there, tender brush of fragrant preoccupation; Paul bit his lip, winced though he demanded himself not to for all the semi-precious jewels, John’s skin rough and golden and slipping a stormy breath from his chest, exhale puffing up in the cooling night. The magnetic pull lost him beneath the sea and John’s eyes were caramel and concerned and beautiful rough, curved warm with his softened intention.

“S’fine, Johnny,” Paul fluttered breathily, losing autopilot to the storm, John’s other hand coming to hold his jaw gingerly and angle the affliction to the tapioca light before releasing gradually. Paul squared his contact, drew it perfectly straight at the older boy, “I ain’t afraid of no man.” And John grinned at that, slowly sliding his toothy smirk, eyes shining in the navy night.

Before bed, tripping drunk and loopy across the new-age carpeting, John insisted gallantly that he clean Paul’s battle wound. ( _“You **did** save my life, Paulie, the least I can do is fix yer goddamn mug” “I didn’t save you at all! You were on the other side of the fuckin’ room—“ “Defeated a whole army of bandits and swung me to safety, why you **shouldn’t** have” “Yer bloody delusional, Lennon”)_ He’d botched his upper half, padding around in a wilted tank top, pressing a sopping cold cloth to Paul’s face in earnestness. Paul paid pension to the flex and roll of John’s biceps as he worked, the outline of his muscles beneath the thin clad of the material, the life running through him so terrifically, like melting iron beneath his veins, blood mixed with water clinging to the rag. Something electrically charged hung in the moment, fizzled briefly in the air, like caffeine on the tongue, a nuance of the senses. Paul locked his vision on John, and John on Paul, misted memories and the clinging moment, though it snapped dryly, exactly, and both went to bed without another utterance.

Shadows waltz and soar across the eggshell pastel wall. Paul watches the grayness go, the black and faint light from the window carding in irreplaceable figurines of the human condition. The sounds of John’s shifting in the sheets, confectioner’s sugar and strawberry bliss, cream and something bitter, by his side keeping him up, exhausted and murky. Thirty minutes had passed uselessly into the night, into history’s qualms, since the two boys had settled down for sleep.

Keys clicking into place, as though John had had enough of whatever it was, his voice rung dense as bark through the dark, “Rather cold, innit?” His voice was sudden, as though he hadn’t expected himself to speak what had clearly been shattering his universe.

Paul halted for a moment in his bleariness, murmuring a, “Seems okay to me,” blankly to the cotton and polyester, cheek against the frigid, warm where his skin met.

Minutes were cemented and glazed and upholstered. The fidgeting had ceased, moon and stars rotating as one, though John’s breathing remained unleveled. Paul’s heart brassed and pressed. John was unsettled, thoughts flitting round in his head, and Paul could sense the unrest, splinters of wood, layers of wool. Paul was crazy, then, for what he would do, fingers clutching his part of the sheets, as though they owed him something dear. His suggestions frightened him, veering off the road to that thing of fondness and kindness, of feelings towards John. The moments sauntered onwards to fighting and death and Paul rolled over in the sheets, limbs moving tentatively though surely in pursuit of a larger goal, before finally, finitely, wrapping around John, and pressing himself partway, chest to back. The warmth sunk through fabric, lemon familiar, and the strictness of John’s tenseness was enough to frighten Paul back to the other side of the bed, that Paul was batty, that Paul shouldn’t have tried to help any, that he had crossed this carefully crafted border of masculinity and sexuality, mortar and stone and brick, and broken it down with his gentleness.

The silence misdirected him.

He was blind in this existence.

“Is this alrigh’?” Paul ventured; his hand rested softly at John’s hip, temporarily if needed.

John didn’t speak, just nodded, mazes and fortresses round his stone and ivy heart, sinking like silt into the mattress. After a beat John saucered forward again with his words, “S’not queer or anything,’ s’just cold is all, the windows got shoddy insulation you know,” biting down hard on his loosely diminishing façade. Paul nodded, the scent of leather and beer heavy on John, neither fully relaxing, comprehension of the situation and relationship fragile and bleeding between them. John was there, in Paul’s arms, not fighting him off, making up dirty lies about the window too far off to be an actual issue of temperature, and Paul was floating from his simple mortal form.

John had detested him.

He’d knocked him stupid.

He’d messed with his head with that kiss.

And now he slept pressed back into Paul, two becoming one.


	12. Finalement: Nous Sommes Allés à Paris (Part III)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Another update! ;)))

_Ravi de vous rencontrer, mon chèr_

Open with fanfare and vocals, Michelangelo’s heaven swirling in light and clouds and redemption.

John was in so bad.

It was madness, swirling blue paint and lost in the sensation as he drowned in the thickness. The feeling danced through curtains of silk in his chest, Marie Antoinette’s ribbons and lace, France a fucking _daydream_ and Paul the golden boy at the center of it all. It was fucking love, it was, and John knew it, numb and dumb to the very crystal _realization_ of it. John wasn’t supposed to get this way, wasn’t supposed to let himself run away and elope with the image of Paul holding him gently and waking up beside him painted pure and soft. He thought he was above that whole kind of charade, had participated in the “fuck and done” act with the lasses for years, but Paul posed a variation of a threat towards that.

Because, John could write songs of Paul, raw and real and so loud and frightening and intoxicating, his soul ripping from its bindings and exploding in the room, colors of crimson and burgundy enthralled in the wallpaper. He shot a glance at Paul, a calmness, and the completion reared and rose on John’s end, as though this was what he was created for, this other person in the room, searching under the bed for his other shoe from the night before, arm blindly caressing the cold hardwood with fingertips webbed wide and urgent, hair sifting to one side with the tilt of his black-beauty-satin hair. When John met Paul fully with his gaze, understanding swung low; the other boy embodied something that rung like home, not a concrete location to reside in, but a feeling, a moment, a fervor that exposed him to tenderness and smooth. John had breathed for infinities more, something that sung to his foundation, his roots and personhood, and in his break, in his wound, he found a sanctuary in Paul.

Pink petals of spring in October, John couldn’t repress what came forth in his carelessness, wondering if it was always like this, if there ever existed a time when John didn’t yearn to caress the smooth porcelain of Paul’s face or taste his mouth and bite ruins against his lips. Did Paul know of these explosions in John’s head, mimicking the galaxies and rewriting the Gospels? John held his own fear that Paul would decline if he knew, decline like he’d done before, so he quelled the burning spreading through his skeleton, Pompeii’s heir, and coated his concealment in silence and stiff, a gift wrapped in newspaper never to be opened.

 

***

 

If Paris knew anything, it was art. The profound, the avant-garde, the freaky and rebellious. John and Paul fit right in, as tightly as the clouds to the sky.

Scattered about exhibits, a museum for the day, tin light rowing through the dusty windows stereotypically gloomy, a pair of mint-black eyes and sapphire brown ones ticked across the paint-smeared canvases forgotten and refused in corners, abandoned to their own. Some pneumatic tension shuffled between them on the hardwood; neither could look at the other.

John still felt Paul’s fingers against his hip, body to his own, and he memorized every inch of the younger boy each moment his back had turned to examine Raphael or Vermeer with pilfered glances that were not his to steal. Paul was a masterpiece in his own right, John thought, a work of onyx and deep browns in his hair, the plush rue of his mouth and the accented, sharp words that came out of it, and everything Paul had hidden beneath all that softness. John could visualize that wit, that brightness and creative genius that pattered through his shutters every now and then if he let John see it, and it sent him mad and muddled, thinking for hours on end if he could only experience that lusciousness more closely.

They’d wandered down a long hallway, completely vacant of life and spirit, high ceilings of stone, vaulted and barreled like a church’s; their footsteps echoed off the walls, desiring some essence of vivacity to char the rafters. Rain had begun to batter the windows as it had done before and would do again in the future. Droplets snapped and shattered themselves against the structure in the name of poetry, in the name of beauty, and with Paul’s profile close enough to distinguish his nose, a few stray freckles, and the quiet complexity of his expression, John understood the rain, disappearing from the sky, plummeting by gravity’s sultry whim, to be with the one they loved, to be with the earth, to sacrifice and lose themselves for him. John swallowed. The rain twinkled, it slapped the architectural design, and sprung forth Buddy Holly in his brain, a beat, a melody following in a seizing loop.

The corridor was vacant.

But John wasn’t. He was filled with the most indescribable fullness, the most vicious anticipation, ink seething through his cells in place of oxygen.

Paul had moved on to another painting; John observed sidelong a few pieces to the right.

It started out quietly at first.

There were no guitars to fill the silences, just the hollowness of the museum resonating back daringly.  
Chest tight, he took a shaky breath in and sent the words into the dusted, antique air, still watching tautly for Paul’s reaction.

_Everyday it’s a-gettin’ closer…_

Paul glanced over suddenly, eyes locking, amusement toying on his face, asking _what do ye think yer doin’ now, sweetheart?_ without murmuring a single syllable. It was nauseating. He told himself to be dry and cool, unaffected, to keep up that thick façade that Paul couldn’t see past, but dammit, the boy could, couldn’t he? The lyrics froze on John’s tongue, tucked under his teeth like candy, stuck to his molars like cavities, like he didn’t want them.

John Lennon wasn’t a timid boy. He knew how to take what he wanted, and he knew what he wanted to take. Yet, Paul had been an enigma from the beginning, encrypted in the da Vinci code and promising him all hell. John couldn’t take from Paul; Paul knew his goddamn worth and resisted the cheeky, sardonic pull of Britain’s most eligible bachelor. What fuckin’ dandy luck.

John inhaled.

He was no coward, he’d finish what he’d mindlessly started, as always, a good captain to go down with every feeble, passion-built vessel.

_Goin’ faster than a rollercoaster…_

His words splintered and cascaded off the ceilings, off the paintings of dead men, and back down to the viewing floor. Paul turned ever the slightest, fondly, peering into John’s shielded image as though dying to hear what the word would sound like in John’s lemony voice.  
John hesitated at the cliff before hurling himself off completely, eyes captured on Paul’s, and the emptied rose garden space betwixt them.

_**Love** like yours will surely come my way…_

The rain fell.

The world turned.

And John stared at Paul as Paul stared back at John.

John couldn’t breathe, copper poured and settled ‘round his lungs. John knew what he sounded like wasn’t very rock n’ roll, was more like a schoolboy scared shitless at some pathetically put-on talent show, but Paul sounded exactly like the real thing, sunshine on a picnic, strawberry juice between the gaps of your fingers, the speckles in his green-tinted eyes.

_Everyday it’s a-gettin’ faster_

_Everyone said go out and ask her_

_Love like yours will surely come my way_

Paul sang with that Texas twang that Buddy Holly infused into his own words, power dipping in and out with the swell of the melody, and John was staring, like _really_ _staring_ , daisies and pollen in spring, locked solid on the sound racing off the spaces, before filling in the words alongside Paul, their voices rising to the heavens, milk and honey happiness, the freedom from exiled Egypt.

Buddy Holly resonated through the thick worn of the wooden floorboards, cold and stern against the fogged, rain-thick windows, and beautifully gliding against the curves of that dense, renaissance ceiling. Paul’s mouths formed phrases candidly, radiantly, eyes afire with the duet, centered with lightening and cosmos on John, connected and discovered in the other. John was born again electric in that moment, raised to God as an offering. The shadows of his affection decorated his heart and the desire to pull Paul close overwhelmed him like a drowning man. Paul completed his music, Paul completed his very _soul_. John would flex a face and Paul would laugh and twist his voice unnecessarily high so John would grin, the chemistry celestial.

John was almost winded by the time the song ended and the last throe of harmony shattered down the hall.

 

***

 

Paul was sitting at the little table by the window, taupe hair still damp from the walk back from the museum in the rain, white undershirt clinging to the muscles at his back, rain light pouring in decidedly thinly. John observed absently from the unlit fireplace, decoding Paul’s movements from a distance. Paul would stare out at the rain, write something down on the parchment set out before him, scrutinize the words for several long, drawn-out beats, then brood out at the rain once more. It didn’t take Socrates to conclude that Paul was lyricize, rather unsuccessfully.

John knows opportunity when he sees it, bleary-eyed and determined.

Sauntering over to the window, placing both hands down on the table to cage Paul into looking up at him, a scene from some low-budget romance film. John peered down his nose fruitlessly, snow-capped mountains and smoky skies, “Need some help there, Macca dear?”  
Paul’s eyes were dark, wide, rose tinting his cheeks, mouth slightly parted, and John could pour lyrics out like dairy by just looking at Paul. Charcoal distance, Paul sat back and crossed his arms, strong as sterling, hesitant, “You want to help, do ye,” he appeared slightly amused by the proposal. “I’m determined to,” John replied, dropping down into the chair across from the younger boy. The table was small, too small for two grown men, and John had to slot his knees awkwardly on either side of Paul’s so they wouldn’t press completely to the other. It was bad religion.

Drawing his glasses from his shirt pocket, he could read the inked words that Paul had scrawled in his manic, cursive penmanship, upside down, but nonetheless legible. They were fruity lyrics, lofty and lovely, and John almost thought them amusing. He almost thought to open his big mouth and say something about how ridiculously soppy they sounded, but Paul would probably chase him away from his sanctity for a singed comment like that. Minutes passed. Paul doesn’t write down another lyric, and John’s still strung his gaze on the loopy phrases written already, sappy, stagey things that Paul had piled down mindlessly, entranced by the scenery and mopey deluge.

“Look at me,” Paul broke the solitude, booted from the mountaintop, and John obeyed as though he’d never thought otherwise to defy.  
Ginger and spice, the almond rays of summer, John was a lost cause as soon as his gaze clicked with Paul’s. They were close enough, nose to nose almost, eyes challenging each other, magnetic denim allurement steel in their glares. Paul’s face was pristine, though not in innocence, but in perfect knowledge, in tarragon mischief hidden in pillows and gentlemanly distance, though he knew how to bite if you got close enough. John sipped deep into those eyes, promising him something exciting and lawless, the peach of his lips, the light to his face. John couldn’t blink, lest it removed the landscape and promise from his sight.

The moment was chiseled in marble, still and alluring.

Paul would produce a lyric and John would match or alter it, a faint glitter in his chest, an aching pull of their two forms together that neither managed to fully express in their lyrics. But that’s all they were, lyrics. Serenading for some girl that didn’t exist, a cover-up that wasn’t Paul because every word was for Paul, every single one, every confession of love and need and want. John couldn’t help but watch Paul’s full lips as they processed the sentences; he was restless and fidgeting thinking about all the places that mouth _could_ be, and when the light faded from the window and the storm picked up in fury, John called it a night early, mumbling something about an early morning.

 

***

 

The tension was driving Paul mad, river running off path and into the wildflowers. In bed, their backs were to each other, a valley of space separating their persons as though they’d never met the other a day in their lives. But, Paul lived in the tension, in John watching Paul’s mouth lyricizing, in John’s stolen glances in the museum, in the lingering presence of the older boy. Something had changed. Lennon’s affections had changed. Paris had seen them grow together and the tension pulled tight and tempting.

Poison taunted his conscience, of what John would do if Paul leaned over and touched him. His mind had been spinning mischievous and crazed all morning, thinking of what John’s fingers would feel like delicate on his skin or rough through his hair, the pleasure and sensation sending messages southbound like a freight train. Paul was plummeting with his own wrecked desires. He couldn’t deny the attraction that had begun to built inside him, the urge to taste John’s mouth—on his own terms—to lose himself in that forbidden pleasure, and now the older boy was a mere three feet away from him.

Like nicotine withdrawal, Paul couldn’t shake the thought. He fretted for more time, weighing his chances, before blindly following his urges in the dark, kicking off the covers from his side and sitting up in bed.

Paris was still, watching silently from her window.

An erratic heartbeat marred in his chest, the blood pounding with nerves, as he peered down at what seemed to be John’s dormant form. The older boy lifted his head and craned his neck back towards Paul, shoulder blades kissing the mattress, releasing a sleep-shrouded, thick, “Macca?” from his lips as his foggy gaze caught the light from the grayed window, cinnamon hair floured all over the place like a splatter painting.

The thundering, forgotten herd, the love-stricken sea, hearing John’s voice like that set Paul off, chased him into motion without thought or conscience as he rolled over and moved to pin John’s shoulder’s to the mattress, legs on either side of John’s, breathing thin, head racing through the forests, mouth parted.

And John was beneath him. John was really there, warmth beneath his fingertips and a solidness beneath him.

John’s expression was almost humorous, the city light trickling in like the tide to stroke his face as though it were made of clay, fragile coarse, where there was no surprise, John anticipating this situation, John aware of this situation, as always. Paul couldn’t be quicker than Lennon, it seemed, the older boy simply a step ahead each time. A moment from the mist, the only thing Paul could possibly relish in as a victory was the slight air of dissonance pulling at John’s lips, something like molten excitement, or maybe even fear if Paul convinced himself, that this boy was no god but human as the rest of us.

“What d’ya think yer doin’, son?” Delightful affection, a childlike reverence was embedded in his tone despite the situation. To which Paul, without taking his unhindered gaze off John, sat back into John’s lap; his intentions could not be mistaken this way, eyes still cloudy and sourced on John.

Paul’s body tinged with expression, with fluttering, sizzling ecstasy, a lucid midnight dream. He’d suppressed his share of fantasies of John in the past couple days, hadn’t permitted his brain to wander to the solid form of the other, or how desperately he wished to suck memorable instants into his collarbone, but it all came crashing down in an instant of luxurious passion. As Paul had rolled his hips back, John had pressed out a hiss from betwixt his teeth, eyes lidded and gaze hinting downward. John was half hard already through his shorts and Paul wouldn’t suppress his grin, self-satisfied bastard he was. The pressure was enough to condemn him, lift him from the rubbish with power and lusty fervor, back alleys and shortened nails clutching linen.

Neither had known any bit of physical touch on the trip; it grew and pulled like a beast within, the anxiousness, the neediness in all that Paul wished to touch and taste and in John’s reservation, in a ticking time bomb that he was, resolutely not moving, but his eyes roaring something dangerous and epic, the type of stuff the Greeks wrote poems about, the type of stuff that ripped Rome and Persia apart by the bricks and cement. They were engaged, Paul reminded himself daily so he wouldn’t forget, but it wouldn’t have been too difficult a charter to pick up a bird at a bar or even one in the hotel; they all seemed too willing and Paul’s body craved movement, touch, destruction.

Paul’s voice was dark, sultry sweet and smoky when he spoke, even to his own alienated ears, hands lingering a little lower now, at John’s pecs, for balance, “Think ye can get away with yer gazin’ all the damn time, Lennon? Startin’ to think yer head over arse in love with me.” He didn’t know where the fervor of those words even came from, mock threats and loose at his teeth, but John was locked gaze on Paul, immovable, face an explosion of emotions contained beneath his stolid containment. Beneath his fingertips at the fabric of John’s worn undershirt, he could feel the heavy _thud, thud_ of John’s heartbeat, thunder in the desert, a storm across the valley. To his eyes, John’s were wide, although he probably couldn’t register much through the wilting darkness and his own blindness. His sturdy hands had found their way to Paul’s waist, a serpent in Eden, steady and drawn, locked and held in the soft flesh and curved press of his hipbone. It was a definite hold of _I’m not letting you go_ and _you better not move_.

No claim of refusal was emitted into the noir as Paul trailed his fingers down to John’s waistband, slow and deliberate, a test. Nothing felt real. The closeness. The yellow glow seeping through the windows and onto the wall. John’s heavy breathing, the rise and fall of his body in the creamy, dizzy paleness. Paul could see the older boy’s teeth were gritted, as though holding back novels, jaw pressed, the line defined, as Paul made the move to finally, _finally_ cup John’s cock through his underwear, fabric soft around the hard definite trace of his arousal. It was electric; he was radiant with control and desire, that John was beneath him and reacting this way to the slightest of touch, a hissing of discomfort but a yearning heat for more of Paul’s luxurious friction. Paul bit the gentle of his bottom lip to hold back a smirk, Lennon watching him through a slatted gaze, firm fingers at the softness of Paul’s sides, fingers gentle yet decidedly solid, letting him have this to himself.

Maybe John didn’t feel comfortable that all this was coming from Paul, a bloke. Maybe the reaction was all physical, and what was holding John back from that final step to the table was Paul’s gender, his own attraction twitching through his own boxers, straining against that _ungodly_ material. The whole thing terrified him, that John could be humoring Paul and his sudden burst of desire, his random display of affection. Maybe John felt _sorry_ for Paul. The wintry moonlit insecurities battered at the door, demanding entrance to the palace, that John hadn’t lashed out yet, hadn’t fully exposed himself as Paul had.

Hot lightening flashed beneath Paul’s skin, these prying pleas of madness, so Paul thought to do the only thing that could possibly balance the situation, send sanity into the clouds and Hades’ forgotten universe.

“Just-just picture I’m a bird,” Paul began to stroke John through the fabric, not bridging beneath just in case, voice rough in his throat, dry and scathed, “one with big tits and blonde hair,” he spoke slowly in the darkness of Paris, shrouded in the unfamiliar familiarity, deliberately, eyes not meeting John’s, just watching his own hand cupping the swell of John’s erection, boldly pressing out. He forced his incisors deeper into his lip to quell a noise welting in his throat, something that might’ve been a whine, because John was thrusting his hips up now suddenly, for more contact, for more of something, a noise low in his throat but not making anything coherent. The friction against the mattress elicited a quietness, an intimacy that strung to Paul’s heart.

Mindlessly, Paul continued with his narration, “one with those sweet little mouths you just wanna ruin,” his brain was on autopilot, slipping a hand into John’s briefs to grasp hold of his hard cock, the skin smooth and the length weighty, pumping it more intentionally this time. And John _moaned_ , couldn’t be mistaken for anything else this time, a textured, fervent sound worth all of Dionysus’ liquid magic, breathy and lost all over, and Paul couldn’t _help_ but snap his head up, get lost in the image of John craning and arching upwards from the mattress, the fire from his chest peeking through his ribcage danced in shuttered shadows on the darkened ceiling, begging for cadence, praying _touch me, touch me, make me silver_ and Paul gazed with green and hazel, breathless, _but you are already gold_. It was too much; his brain stuttered into overdrive, taking his free hand to begin stroking himself, his own aching, throbbing cock, precum leaking into the front of his boxers, sticky and slick against his fingers.

“All wet and ready for ye,” Paul managed, dropping his head down to John’s shoulder, rolling his hips into his own fist almost unconsciously, still keening in John’s lap. He could feel John’s breath hot against the side of his neck, imagining something else, imagining John’s hands all over him, his hand stroking his cock instead of his own, slow and teasing before fast and determined, and his mouth against his neck biting bruises and, _“fuck,”_ Paul whined, loudly, hotly, wetly, the sound vibrating through his body. He’d been doing his best to describe Brigitte Bardot, but it appeared unclear whether John was thinking of the French model or any bird at all really. And Paul had tried to do the same for himself, but failed miserably, mind sitting back to John always, his mouth wet and panting and his hands— _God, how he yearned for those hands_ —strong and powerful and guiding Paul’s rolling movements, and his eyes piercing and following every touch and his tongue tucking in between his teeth ever the slightest and Paul _wanted_ this, _wanted_ John, and that was all kinds of queer, wasn’t it? But, Paul wasn’t one of _those_ , though he was grinding up against John as he’d yearned to do the entire day, to feel John’s heat and reaction against him so close and intimately. Moments in the blackness passed, Paul rocking and writhing in John’s lap, jerking John off beneath his underwear in time with his own and John’s thrusting up into anything Paul would give him layered with gasping breaths and deep, wet moans disturbing the quiet of the night, drowning in pleasure, the sound of skin against skin surrounding them and pressing Paul’s heart out of his bleeding chest.  
Then John’s hips stuttered and rolled and the older boy let out a wrecked, maddening, “Paulie, I’m gonna--,” and emitting a choked off noise at Paul’s twist of the wrist, sliding his thumb over the head of his throbbing cock.

And Paul lifted his head and gazed darkly into John’s eyes, knowing full well how he looked, dirty innocent with those full lips and generously sinful eyes, cheeks of cherry blossom and riding into his own palm, “S’okay, Johnny.”  
Paul knew that would push John over the edge, knew that that’s what John had needed, those eyes and that permission, that Paul _knew_ John had thought of him the whole time, a hand that had migrated to Paul’s ass and squeezed it, hips jerking up through his orgasm as he gasped out in surrendered satisfaction.

As John came down, limply planted against the pillows, hands still frozen dazedly to Paul’s sides, Paul rode up into his own palm, head tilted back, mouth open wetly, panting, feeling John beneath him before spilling into his fingers loudly, louder than he’d anticipated, a cry that peeled against the walls, through the insulation, and sealed their fates. Head light, chest dense, he rested his eyes upon John, who gazed up at him with that unreadable expression, lips a thin line, eyes obscurely blind in the dark. Their skin stuck together as one, sweaty and melted, kisses to be broken as Paul slipped off and rolled back to his side of the bed, words deliberately unspoken and fragile. Neither made another move or spoke for the rest of the night.


End file.
